Category: Philippines

I got an email from Niquie Angelo. As the Business Development Officer of AddedSport Scholars Program, Niquie is helping young top-notch athletes fulfill their dream of playing in a U.S. university. 

Niquie is the daughter of my good friend Robert Angelo, who, many years back, was the No. 1-ranked men’s tennis player in the Philippines.

Below is the email that Niquie sent entitled “AddedSport Scholars Program: Changing Lives Through Sports.”

LeBron James, Maria Sharapova, and Cristiano Ronaldo – world-famous legends in their own sport. But what do they all have in common? A disciplined attitude, the heart to commit, and a humble background.

Sports have the capacity to completely transform people’s lives. From pursuing a professional career to getting recruited into a good school abroad, opportunities abound for young athletes, especially in the US where the world of sport is taken so seriously. Their generous financial aid, intensive training, and high grade sporting facilities have produced some of the world’s top athletes in recent years. US college sports has definitely established itself as a stepping stone to the professional world and has become a privilege that many high school athletes aspire for today.

AddedSport, one of the leading sports management firms in Asia, consists of a team of ex-collegiate athletes who are passionate about opening opportunities and guiding junior athletes to achieve the same dreams of studying in the US and playing for some of the world’s most prestigious universities.

While US University coaches have concentrated most of their efforts recruiting in their own backyard and neighboring continents, a handful of Asian junior athletes have caught the eyes of these coaches from competitive programs. But the number remains insignificant because these are mostly composed of players that are top-ranked and are well-supported to get enough international exposure. For the past 5 years, AddedSport has sent hundreds of top athletes to the US for college sports. 

This year, the company seeks to go beyond Asia’s creme de la creme and discover gems that are hidden in more remote areas. We are delighted to launch the AddedSport Scholars Program. This initiative aims to develop the next wave of professional athletes from Asia through US college recruitment, focused on uncovering the hidden brilliance of the athletes who persevere despite their difficult socio-economic circumstances. The program applicants will go through a screening process which includes an assessment by a panel of expert sportspersons who are recognized for their contribution to their field.

Athletes chosen to be a part of the AddedSport Scholars Program will undergo an intense mentoring process involving both the academic and athletic aspects of their future careers. They will be guided by some of the most experienced professionals who are former national and/or ex-collegiate athletes themselves. The goal is to mould these participants to become highly sought after student-athletes who receive the best possible financial offers from US Universities, which will allow them to pursue their dreams.

We are looking for talented, hard-working, young athletes who are willing to commit to this program to start their journey towards a better future. If you think you have what it takes and will qualify, or know someone who would fit the requirements, please send us an email: [email protected].

#DreamBig with AddedSport!

Exactly 104 days remain before the Philippines hosts the 2019 Southeast Asian Games. Held every two years with 11 nations participating, the last time our country hosted was in 2005. This will be the fourth time we’ll host the SEA Games, having also welcomed the athletes in 1981 and 1991.

From November 30 (when the Opening Ceremony kicks off in the Philippine Arena) until the flame gets extinguished in the Closing Ceremony in the brand-new Athletic Stadium in Clark on December 11, over 9,000 athletes will compete in the 12-day meet.

Cebu? Ha-ha. We’re far from any action. Twelve years ago when the SEAG was held in our archipelago, Cebu hosted three events: dancesport (Waterfront Lahug), sepak takraw (USC gym) and penchak silat (Cebu Coliseum). This 2019, we’re hosting zero events.

Luzon gets the honor to host all the 530 events from 56 sports. The three main hubs are in Metro Manila, in Subic and in Clark.

At the center of the games is the New Clark City Sports Hub, located in Tarlac. This is the spot where the 20,000-seater Athletics Stadium is found.

Nearby is the 2,000-seater Aquatics Center, a world-class facility complete with a 10-lane Olympic-standard pool and an 8-lane training pool. Billions of pesos (news reports have said between P3 to P6 billion) have been poured into funding this new sports complex. Lucky for Clark.

Metro Manila gets to host majority of the more popular events like basketball (Mall of Asia Arena), volleyball (Ninoy Aquino Stadium), badminton (Makati) and boxing (PICC). The Rizal Memorial Sports Complex has been furiously undergoing renovations; it will host tennis, squash, football, taekwondo and weightlifting.

The SEAG has an approved budget of P7.5 billion.

Here’s an intriguing game: Obstacle course. Yes, the game that’s often played in family gatherings or team-building exercises is one of the unique events offered this December. And for those familiar with UP Diliman, the six events under the Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) sport will be held at the Sunken Garden! How exciting is that.

Esports is making its debut at the SEA Games. I’m no gamer but the six titles to be played are “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang,”  “Arena of Valor,” “DoTA 2,” “Hearthstone,” “StarCraft II,” and “Tekken 7.” The venue will be inside the FilOil Flying V Sports Arena in San Juan.

With 530 events coming from 56 sports, the 2019 SEA Games will be a sports fanatics dream-come-true spectacle. And, for sure, there will be several athletes from the nearly 10,000 competitors who’ll see action at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics next year.

How will the host Philippines do overall? The goal is lofty. To aim is to win that No. 1 spot — the same spot we achieved back in 2005 when we won the overall trophy.

The problem is, not until last week when the PSC and POC and the other sports bodies finally got together and got united, it was all squabbling and “sports politics” among our leaders. Our hope is that all this fighting will not hamper our hosting preparations and will not dampen the motivation of our athletes.

Go, Pilipinas.

Like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, the Asian Games are held every 48 months. This sporting spectacle is significant. Of the planet’s 7 continents, Asia is the largest with 4.5 billion people covering 60 percent of the world’s 7.5 billion people.

The cities of Jakarta and Palembeng in Indonesia are co-hosting the 16-day meet that started with the Opening Ceremony last night and concluding on Sept. 2. A total of 45 nations representing 11,000 athletes are participating. Indonesia was not supposed to host; but in 2014, Vietnam backed out because of financial concerns and Indonesia stepped in.

The Asian Games — also referred to as the “Asiad” —  started in 1951 in New Delhi, India. Guess who hosted the 2nd Asian Games? Our very own Manila. Back in 1954 when Ramon Magsaysay was president, we hosted a small contingent of 970 athletes (from 19 countries) and our Philippines ended up 2nd place overall. The main venue in that Asiad 64 years ago remains our main venue today (this shows how much we have NOT progressed): Rizal Memorial, built in 1934. We have not hosted another Asiad since 1954.

For Team Philippines, we are sending a delegation of 281 athletes representing 31 sports in Indonesia. A total of 63 officials will be attending. Our flag bearer? You’ve heard the news: it’s Jordan Clarkson, the 6-foot-4 former teammate of LeBron James whose mom Annette Davis hails from Angeles, Pampanga.

Gilas Pilipinas is, in our basketball-crazy nation, the team to follow. It was a controversial “yes,” “no,” and finally “yes” decision to allow the team to participate. I’m glad Gilas joined. They humiliated Kazakhstan in the first game and, with Clarkson as leader, will play China this Tuesday at 5 p.m.

Sports 5, the media outfit of Manny Pangilinan-owned TV5 and ESPN, is broadcasting most of the Asian Games action through the TV channel and via their live-streaming YouTube channel. (Watching sports on YouTube has become an excellent option. You can watch anytime and there are plenty of shortened versions.)

Mary Joy Tabal, the pride and joy of Cebu, will be joining the 42K road race. The women’s marathon is scheduled seven days from today (August 26) while the Men’s Marathon will be the day before.

As a whole, Team Philippines is (unfortunately) not expected to perform well. Four years ago in Incheon, South Korea, we produced one of our worst-ever showings: only Daniel Caluag won gold (in BMX cycling). We ended up winning 15 medals (one gold, three silver, and 11 bronze) and hope to improve on this performance.

What’s interesting with this Asiad is the inclusion of eSports or electronic sports. Although it’s now a demonstration event, it will be a medal sport in 2022 in Hangzhou, China. Games like “StarCarft II,” “Arena of Valor” and four other video game titles will be played by 18 competing nations. What puzzles me — as an internet-savvy nation — is the exclusion of the Philippines in eSports at the Asiad.

The influence of the country’s most influential sportsman just became stronger. His name is Manny V. Pangilinan. He bankrolls Gilas Pilipinas. He owns three teams in the PBA (Meralco Bolts, NLEX Road Warriors and TNT KaTropa). The 2023 hosting of the FIBA World Cup, when we’ll see Giannis and Kyrie and Porzingis in Manila? This was made a reality because of MVP.

Now, thanks to the all-out backing of the PLDT boss, the mogul at the Phil. Olympic Committee (POC) named Peping Cojuangco was finally booted out last Friday. Mr. Pangilinan visited Wack Wack Golf Club minutes before the POC elections started. And, when victory was claimed, he promised P20 million as seed money for the new POC.

Victorico P. Vargas is the 10th chieftain of the country’s Olympic committee. Nicknamed Ricky, he has succeeded top personalities that included Ambrosio Padilla, Jose Sering and Cristy Ramos. And, if you look further into the POC history, there’s one named “Jorge Vargas” and he was the POC head from 1935 to 1955.

Vargas and Vargas are relatives. Ricky is the grandson of Jorge, a sports icon who became the first Pinoy member of the IOC.

Fast forward six decades later, Ricky P. Vargas assumed the POC presidency when he won the POC election of the NSAs with a tally of 24-15. It appears that “24” is his lucky number. Yesterday, the 24th of February, was the birthday of Mr. Vargas.

In Philippine sports, he now holds the most powerful of positions. In the PBA, he was the recently-installed chairman for the 2017-2018 season. In boxing, he’s the president of the Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines, the NSA for the sport of Manny Pacquiao.

PBA. Boxing. POC.

How powerful can a sportsman get?

My personal take on Mr. Vargas? He is non-traditional, non-political and has proven himself in the business world — which will be helpful in running the POC. He will do well.

He also has the backing of MVP. From 2000 to 2010, he was the Senior VP of PLDT. For five years starting in 2010, he was CEO of Maynilad Water Services, a Pangilinan-run company. Of his dozens of key associates, Ricky Vargas is MVP’s most trusted man.

The task confronting Mr. Vargas is herculean. After a 13-year long reign, Peping Cojuangco still has his men and cohorts in the POC. And you know who sits as the Philippine representative to the IOC? She’s Peping’s daughter, Mikee Cojuangco-Jaworski. Vargas will have to collaborate with her. What’s sad to know is that politics will forever be infused in sports.

Frank Elizalde, who presided over the POC elections, was asked if healing in sports is possible. He laughed.

“Knowing my fellow POC members, no. Sorry,” he said. “In reality, there’s a lot of not friendly relations among a lot of people.”

Losing hurts. And Peping might file a protest with the IOC. If he does, what a shame. Had he willingly given up his selfish throne last year, he would have been granted an honorable exit.

It’s a bright, new morning for sports.

Good luck, MVP and RPV.

The Southeast Asian Games is held every two years. For the 29th edition, Malaysia is hosting 11 nations this August 19 to 30. There are nearly 5,000 athletes competing in 38 sports and 404 events and this will be the sixth time for Malaysia to host.

I’ve been to Kuala Lumpur once. This was 10 years ago to watch Roger Federer play Pete Sampras in the event, “Clash of Times.” Kualu Lumpur is impressive. With the Petronas Towers soaring above Malaysia’s capital, KL was named by CNN as the “world’s 4th best city for shopping.” It is also the seventh most visited city on this planet.

With the SEAG, the opening ceremonies will be this Saturday, the birthday of the best man in my wedding, my brother Charlie. Since Kuala Lumpur was awarded the hosting in 2012, it has prepared relentlessly. The main arena is the Bukit Jalil National Sports Complex, about 20 kms. from the city center, and its 1988-built stadium boasts of 87,411 seats.

An estimated (in Phil. pesos) P19 billion was allocated by Malaysia to prepare the infrastructure of the SEAG host nation. (Of the 36 venues, 19 will be in KL and 10 will be in Selangor; the other host-cities include Putrajaya and Negeri Sembilan.) To help save cost, they’ve upgraded existing facilities instead of building new ones.

There will also be no “athlete’s village” where Mary Joy Tabal, Alyssa Valdez and our flag-bearer, Kirstie Elaine Alora (of taekwondo), will stay in. The host country decided not to spend billions for new facilities that often become “white elephants.” Instead, they’re decided to house all the athletes, coaches and officials in dozens of hotels scattered near the venues.

Major sporting events are all about volunteerism. I’ve seen this first hand in the Olympics. For next week, when the announcement was made asking for volunteers, they received 50,000 online applications. Only 13,000 were chosen. But this tells us of the spirit of volunteerism of the Malaysians.

With the sporting events, there will be a total of 404 events in 38 sports. The choosing of which events to include, largely dependent on the host country, is often controversial.

One example is Indonesia. Back when it hosted the 2011 SEA Games, they included numerous non-Olympic events which resulted to them winning 476 medals, including 182 gold medals. They ranked No. 1. Two years later in Myanmar, their tally dropped by nearly half to 258 medals and, worse, in Singapore 2015, they collected only 182 medals (and 47 gold).

With next week’s hosting, I’m unsure if Malaysia is doing the same. But Thailand’s representative, Charoen Wattanasin, was quoted as saying last year, “Malaysia is taking advantage of other member countries. It has opted for its favourite sports — events in which it has high hopes — in the Games. It has a clear mission to get the medals from every sport in the Games. Even many traditional sports are missing. It is disappointing that Malaysia has ignored some good events as well.”

Speaking of our pride and joy, Mary Joy Tabal, did you know that Malaysia was planning to exclude the marathon in the SEAG? But thanks to an online petition from the running community, the 42K is back. Even better, the organizers will include the general public with 15K and 5K runs on the same marathon day, August 19.

TAIPEI — Taiwan is small. If you open Google Maps and compare the Philippines with our neighbor up north, it’s smaller than Mindanao. Taiwan is only 12 percent the land area of our country. Population-wise, their 24 million people is one-fourth our overpopulated nation. But if we compare economies, their GDP of US$1.147 trillion is sizable versus our $793 billion.

Sports? If we base the analysis on the Olympics, they beat us. Since they joined in 1956 in Melbourne (while we started earlier at the 1924 Paris Games), they’ve accummulated 24 medals versus our 10. Plus, they’ve gained the shiniest of precious metals: two gold medals for taekwondo in Athens and, just last August in Rio, another gold medal for women’s weightlifting.

Last Sunday, I spoke about the Taipei Marathon and discussed the moniker, “The Bicycle Kingdom,” conferred to this nation that manufactures millions of bicycles each year.

Biking and running are popular in Taiwan. Their streets are wide and planted with biking and jogging lanes — unlike our roads where the joggers and bikers have to negotiate the traffic with tricycles, private vehicles, jeepneys, pedicabs and, worse, motorbikes who “counter-flow.”

But as beloved as biking and running are in Taiwan, they’re not the most celebrated sport. This mantle belongs to baseball. If the Philippines has basketball, Taiwan has baseball. First introduced during the Japanese rule — which ran from 1895 until the end of WW2 in 1945 — baseball is Taiwan’s national sport. And if we cheer for the PBA, theirs is the Chinese Professional Baseball League. The Taiwanese have produced world-class players and have sent a few to America to play in Major League Baseball. These include Wei-Yin Chen (Orioles) and Chien-Ming Wang (Yankees and Nationals).

How good are the Taiwanese? According to the International Baseball Federation, Chinese-Taipei is ranked world no. 3, behind only the U.S. and Japan. They won silver at the Barcelona Olympics and bronze in 1994 at the Los Angeles Olympics.

With baseball, it’s the No.1 sport that they follow. But it’s not the top game that the Taiwanese themselves play. That honor goes to basketball and their top league is the Super Basketball League (SBL).

In tennis, their star netter is Lu Yen-hsun. He was ranked as high as world no. 33 (in 2010) and he currently sits at no. 64. I recall an interesting story involving this 33-year-old, 5-foot-11 player who resides in Taipei. Back in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, my wife Jasmin and I watched Andy Murray in singles. As he was ahead in the first set and was playing an unknown opponent, we moved to the other courts knowing that he’ll easily advance. An hour or so later, we saw the score flash: Murray lost! Minutes after the Briton’s shocking defeat, we saw his mom Judy walk in front of us, downtrodden and shocked. The man who beat Murray? Lu Yen-hsun of Taiwan.

More on tennis: the Chinese-Taipei team has played Davis Cup in Plantation Bay Resort and Spa. For those who visited the five-star resort in Marigondon in 2011, you were treated to smashing tennis action which ended up with the Taiwanese winning, 3-2.

Among the women, it’s Hsieh Su-wei who has achieved the highest of goals. Two years ago competing in doubles, she was ranked No. 1 in the world.

29th UNIVERSIADE. One major sporting event that this nation is looking forward to will run from August 19 to 30 next year. It’s the 2017 Taipei Summer Universiade and over 12,000 athletes from 150 countries are scheduled to converge for these biennial games.

Dubbed “the largest multi-sport event in the world apart from the Olympics,” the Universiade is organized purely for university athletes. Last year, South Korea hosted and next year, it’s Taiwan’s turn to organize this event which consists of 14 compulsory sports, seven optional sports and one demonstration sport.

In summary, sports-fan or not, Taiwan (especially with the direct EVA Air flights from Cebu) should be part of your travel list in 2017.