Dancers power Cebu to BP title

TACLOBAN CITY—Cebu City shuffled its way to 35 of 36 gold medals staked in dancesports at the Leyte National High School here yesterday and captured the overall championship of the Visayas leg of the POC-PSC Batang Pinoy 2012.

Bannered by dancers from the renowned Dancesports Cebu, which recruits talents from the city’s poor communities to keep them out of the streets, Cebu City stormed past host Leyte province, which leaned on the track and field exploits of standouts from the Leyte Sports Academy-Smart in the competition for 15 years old and below.

Cebu City finished with a golden haul of 70 on top of 56 silver and 54 bronze medals. Leyte settled for second with a final 39-26-27 medal tally.

“We are pleased with the results of the Visayas leg; it should be a very exciting National Finals with the impressive showing of this region especially in track and field and swimming,” said Jay Alano, the Batang Pinoy project director from the Philippine Sports Commission.

Dancesports was staged here as the national finals along with girls’ softball—won by Laguna via a clean 6-0 sweep—and weightlifting which was dominated by Zamboanga City and Bohol with three golds each.

Mandaue also grabbed the spotlight at the end of the weeklong competition with seven boxing gold medals. Four of the winners—Raymond Tarona in kids’ kiddieweight, Christian John Casanares in kids’ powderweight, Romel Tunacao in boys’ paperweight and Jeffrey Stella in boys’ pinweight—scored abbreviated victories.

Also winning for Mandaue were Jomar Caspe in kids’ antweight, Vicente Seos-e in kids’ minimumweight and Ramil Casanares in boys’ mosquitoweight. Mandaue, which also bagged three golds each in arnis and karatedo, wound up with a 16-5-9 medal tally for fifth overall.

As in the previous four qualifying legs, the top two athletes in each event will earn ticket to the National Finals set in Iloilo City on Dec. 5 to 9.

While LSA-Smart focused its campaign on track and field, which yielded 32 golds for the host, Bacolod City and Negros Occidental trained their sights on swimming where they plucked 17 golds each.

Bacolod wound up third overall with a 32-22-20 medal harvest that also include victories in taekwondo (4), table tennis (2), and athletics (9). Remselle Limaco and Kyla Isabelle Mabus, both 15, each delivered six swim golds for Bacolod.

Negros Occidental finished with a medal collection of 28-13-13 for fourth overall. Dustin Marco Ong, 12, and Lorenzo Xavier Abello both won five swim golds while the tracksters added nine victories.