You might think, at first that this piece belongs to the sports section of this paper, but bear with me. There are good reasons why I’m publishing it here.

With a population that’s the 12th- largest in the world, we should be a sports power in the planet. We should be leaving scores of other nations in the dust. But, in fact, we can hardly support our own weight in sports.

For generations, we’ve been obsessing about getting our first gold in the Olympics. But up to now, we have been denied. And it torments many of us that when the quadrennial Games unfold in Beijing this August, the drought will continue.

One reason often cited for our mediocrity in sports is economics. We don’t have the money to throw into the sports arena. Without the funds, we can’t produce the goods. Without the dough, we can’t come up with the training and the coaches who can turn talent into winners.

But that argument is more sophistic than persuasive. While our per capita spending on sports may be lower than many countries, substantial public and private funds nevertheless go into sports in this country. At least a billion pesos in public funds—from the national budget and government corporations like Pagcor—support sports activities. The private-sector contribution is much, much larger.

We can’t ascribe the mediocrity, either, to lack of sports talent in the country, or what a friend has called the undernourishment of our people. At periodic intervals, great athletes like Lydia de Vega, Robert Jaworski and Manny Pacquiao have emerged in our midst. The base is there to tap. It’s just a question of how.

Nor can we ascribe mediocrity to lack of public support for sports. The fever with which the nation responds to a phenom like Pacquiao is awesome. Whenever Ateneo and La Salle clash in the UAAP, the fans—from classrooms to boardrooms—go on holiday to get wild and delirious. And when our billiards players go up against the world in the annual world pool championships, we watch and marvel.

The problem, I believe, is that our efforts in most sports are scattered and sporadic. We’re not tapping the base of talent, resource, public support and commercial sponsorship in a way that would drive national sports to the heights. Division rather than unity is the rule in many sports. And always, the thinking is more about medals than building a strong and broad base for sports development around the country.

Thus our sports harvest is always lean. And it doesn’t get any better from year to year.

Billiards experience

I’ve seen the problem up close because of my work in billiards. I am chairman of the Billiards and Snooker Congress of the Philippines (BSCP). I am part of a company that engages in sports promotion and management. And I pioneered in writing about billiards in our country, long before our pool players began to shine in the heavens. 

Some three years ago, when I joined the BSCP board, Philippine billiards was in a similar situation as most other sports in the country. Billiards tournaments were scarce. The sport had two big stars in Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante, and virtually nothing else. When the world invited players to join tournaments abroad, they were the only ones invited because everyone out there thought no other Filipino could play. 

We knew the real situation to be otherwise. The talent base was huge; what was missing was just the opportunity for players to develop and show their stuff.  Accordingly, the BSCP embarked on a program for broad expansion, promotion and development of the sport.

By the end of 2005, we took eight of 14 billiards gold medals in the SEA Games in Manila, even after Reyes and Bustamante declined to play.

In the next two years, we hosted the prestigious World Pool Championship in Manila, not just once, but twice in a row, thanks to the assistance of President Arroyo; we organized annual national pool championships for men, women and juniors; we piloted a weekly pool TV program and billiards academy; and we launched the modernization of billiards facilities in the country through Star Billiards, distributor of the finest billiards equipment in the world.

In January 2007, Billiards Digest, the premier international magazine of our sport, cited the Philippines as “the new epicenter of pool” in the world. 

This year, we have set our sights on even bigger things.

First, we campaigned and won our own franchise for an official world pool championship—the World Ten-Ball Championship of the World Pool-Billiard Association. Beginning this September-October at the PICC, it will be held in the country for the next eight years.

Second, we have established the Philippine Pool Tour, a series of international tournaments in strategic cities throughout the country, with city governments as our partners. On May 6, we launched the first PPT event in Mandaluyong City, with Mayor Benhur Abalos as host. From June 21 to 24, we move to Puerto Princesa City, with Mayor Edward Hagedorn as host. And it will continue month after month from city to city.   

Third, we have forged an understanding with the Department of Education and Secretary Jesli Lapus for the inclusion of billiards in the physical-education curriculum as a means to arrest the high dropout rate of pool players and start the training of players at an early age.

We are succeeding because we are in tune with what is happening in the rest of the world. We are thinking globally. We have links with the major billiards organizations in the world. And when we hold an international tournament on our shores, the world literally comes to play.

Perversely, as the BSCP and its partner organizations have succeeded in expanding opportunities and sponsorships for our sport, there are those who are trying their utmost to block and derail us. Player managers have harnessed their wards in a bid to take over our NSA and leadership of the sport.

It is an all-too-familiar story in Philippine sports. Crab mentality, envy and greed try to wrest the mantle from those who have succeeded. But they’re not going to succeed in billiards. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not with millions of stakeholders backing the BSCP throughout the country.  

E-mail: yenmakabenta@yahoo.com.

As part of our editorial policy, this paper prefers to leave the coverage of crime stories to the tabloids. However, the carnage at the Cabuyao, Laguna, branch of one of the country’s biggest banks on Friday was such an outrage as to compel us to examine the issue of law and order—and how their breakdown affects the conduct of business.

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The Way Forward: Sports and national dynamism

You might think, at first that this piece belongs to the sports section of this paper, but bear with me. There are good reasons why I’m publishing it here.