NATURALIZATION: IS IT THE FINAL SOLUTION TO OUR ATHLETIC WOES?
By Ed de la Vega, DDS
PhilBoxing.com
Tue, 13 Aug 2013
The recently concluded FIBA Asia Championship Games held in Manila once again confirmed a couple of interesting albeit previously known facts that were practically ignored for time immemorial in the Philippines.
First, given the proper financial backing, the country can host huge international events with immense success. Business exectuve and philanthropist Manny Pangilinan has proven that again and again.
Pangilinan?s generosity is indeed awesome and it showed the way for many more financial moguls in the country what they should be doing with their money to help the country establish national pride even only in athletics.
But most especially, it vividly displayed the shameful political maneuvering that resulted in the lack of consistent and adequate government support for our sports programs. Therefore, our athletes? success in international competitions are far and in between.
In addition to the above, it also demonstrated how quickly our politicos will grab hold of a situation and maximize their public exposure for political profits. The big-named politicos where nowhere around to watch live competitions when the athletes where not doing so good. But behold, as soon as they reached the peak, the politicians were all over ?showing their support? and their faces.
Second, the FIBA Games again demonstrated that in many types of athletic competitions, Filipinos will be hard pressed to hit the top not because of lack of desire or heart but because we lack size and bulk.
And, this is true particularly in basketball, a game we often call our ?national sport? owing to the fact that there is a hoop in every dirt lot even in far flung barangays.
This disadvantage in size and bulk was demonstrated in the championship game against Iran. It played a great deal of difference particularly inside the paint area.
When Marcus Eugene Douthit got injured in the game against South Korea, Gilas as hard as they tried, did not have adequate answer to the bigger and taller Iranians in the gold medal game.
Yesterday, Deputy Speaker Roberto Puno did a privilege speech to congratulate Team Gilas for its success in getting themselves qualified for the World Games next year in Spain. He also thanked all those who had a hand in their success particularly the ever generous Manny V. Pangilinan.
Along the way, Puno proposed a resolution that would naturalize at least two more non-native born athletes to supplement the Philippine team.
He cited Qatar and South Korea as examples, two countries who have no misgivings about being represented by non-native players just to win games.
Puno?s proposals, to this writer, are misdirected. Why find a temporary short term solution for a long term goal?
Is winning with the help of non-native born athletes our only goal? Are the Games only about winning?
Where has our national pride gone?
This writer believes that instead of going the short way by giving citizenships to foreign athletes purely due to their athletic prowess, the government should provide long term and adequate financial support and properly develop our native players from the grass root level.
If we need foreign aid in athletics, this is where we should focus.
Government should provide consistent and adequate funds to hire professional coaches who can help develop our programs in conjunction with our talented pool of native coaches.
The key here is ?long term and adequate support? sans political interferences.
Puno can get this done by passing legislation to permanently and adequately fund our national athletic programs. In the process, Puno can also include a proviso to pick a Commissioner or overseer (but not ?Trapos?) to guide the athletic programs in the country.
Our native players developed this way will not guarantee that we will get to the very top particularly in basketball owing to our lack of size and bulk.
But we can develop athletes in other sports who can compete and possibly win a ?gold? and give us that much needed national pride in sports.
I believe we can get that done without relying heavily on naturalization of foreign athletes.
Photo: Marcus Eugene Douthit.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ed de la Vega, DDS.
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