Ramirez meets with NSA heads to finalize PH roster

Knowing that leaders of the national sports associations are the best judges of their respective athletes, Philippine Sports Commission Chair and chef de mission Butch Ramirez will gather on Wednesday the top officials of all participating NSAs in the 30th Southeast Asian Games to finalize the standards on which the national delegation will be formed.

“We need to come together as a group and agree on the criteria,” said Ramirez. “The PSC recognizes its strengths and, in this case, our strength lies in the knowledge of our partners.”

Only the president and secretary general of each of the 57 sports have received the invite to the Team Philippines assessment meeting scheduled at Philippine International Convention Center.

Ramirez said the performances of Filipino athletes in the 2015 Singapore and 2017 Malaysia SEA Games would be used as basis along with their outputs in the Asian Games and other world-level competitions.

“It’s basically the same criteria used by previous CDMs (chef de mission) in past multi-sports events where we participated in, but we will craft it to serve our purpose for these Games,” said Ramirez.

Though the challenges are enormous, Ramirez made it clear that the government won’t spend billions of pesos without aiming for the top.

Team Philippines captured its first-ever overall title in the 11-nation meet during the 2005 Manila hosting with Ramirez credited for the feat in his first stint as CDM.

“It’s easy to get carried out by the issues, but as our President has instructed, we need to shield the athletes from the confusion,” said Ramirez.

Six deputies have been appointed to unburden the load of the CDM with DCDM (deputy chef de mission) Stephen Fernandez designated as the alter ego of Ramirez.
Fernandez, the former taekwondo ace who represented the country in several international tournaments, will be the one who will represent their office when the latter has bigger situations to attend to.

Other DCDMs appointed were Ada Milby of rugby and PSC commissioners Celia Kiram, Arnold Agustin, Charles Maxey and PBA all-time great Ramon Fernandez.

“I told them to just focus on helping our athletes,” said Ramirez.

The labor of monitoring the three cluster areas—Metro Manila, Subic and Clark—has been divided among six DCDMs.

Milby and Agustin are tasked to oversee the athletes and facilities at New Clark City, the hub of the Games where most medals will be disputed.

Kiram has been designated to look after the athletes in Subic while Fernandez and Maxey will take care of the sports that will be played Metro Manila, counting the centerpiece men’s basketball where Gilas is expected to play.