DAVAO DEL NORTE—Maurice Sacho Ilustre has been breaking one national junior record after another and he has continued to do so in the 2015 Palarong Pambansa on Tuesday.
Ilustre, swimming out of De La Salle-Zobel, was a sensation on Tuesday at the Davao del Norte Sports and Tourism Complex pool.
The 15-year-old from Muntinlupa City broke a 17-year-old Palaro record in the morning heat of the boys’ secondary 200-meter butterfly with a time of two minutes and 9.04 seconds. Olympian Carlo Piccio set the previous mark of 2:09.98 in the 1998 Centennial Palaro at the Panaad pool in Bacolod City.
Ilustre returned in the afternoon and shattered his own boys’ 13-17 record with a gold-medal winning time of 2:07.28, with Andrae Pogiongko (2:13.57) completing a 1-2 finish for National Capital Region (NCR) and Calabarzon’s Arian Neil Puyo (2:13.84) salvaging a podium finish.
“My dad told me to break the record in the heats and I did,” said Ilustre, who owns the national junior record of 58.12 seconds in the 100-meter butterfly he set last year in the Private Schools Athletic Association Nationals in the same Davao del Norte pool. “But I felt I was in my comfort zone to break the record because I trained hard for these Palaro.”
To underscore his strength in the pool, Ilustre won his second gold medal—clocking 4:11.18 in the 400-meter freestyle finals—to help power NCR’s five gold-medal pool on the first day of swimming competitions alone.
Davao region’s Christian Paul Anor Davao (4:18.80) prevented a 1-2 NCR finish by clinching the silver, in the process shoving Ilustre’s teammate Rochmond Santos (4:26.70) to the bronze medal.
Seth Isaac Martin was also unbeatable in elementary boys’ 100-meter backstroke. He clocked 1:06.38 in topping his heat and, more important, broke the games record of 1:07.21 he himself set last year in Laguna.
Martin, a double gold winner in the Dumaguete 2013 Palaro, also anchored the NCR 4×50-meter medley relay team that included Charles Johnnuel Arceo, Ian Timothy Go and Sean Gabriel Cruz to a heat-clinching time of 2:05.04—chopping off eighth-tenth of a second of the old record an NCR team established also in 2014.
And, like Ilustre, Martin won gold in the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 1:07.01. Go was second with 1:11.38 and Central Visayas’s Psalm Daniel Aquino was third with 1:11.61.
Jules Katherine Ong (girls’ 12-under 200-meter freestyle, 2:17.28) and Camille Lauren Buico (girls’ 12-under 50-meter butterfly) accounted for the Big City athletes’ other swimming gold medals in the Palaro, supported by the Tagum Agricultural Development Co. Inc., Damosa Land, Davao Packaging Corp., Davao International Container Terminal Inc. and Pearl Farm Beach Resort.
Calabarzon matched NCR’s output of five gold medals from the pool, while Western Visayas and Central Visayas scooped one mint apiece also on Tuesday.
Gwen Brynne Prejula swam in her last Palaro and finally won gold for Calabarzon in the girls’ 13-17 400-meter freestyle in 4:51.18. Matching Prejula’s feat were Arian Neil Puyo (boys’ 13-17 100-meter backstoke, 1:01.87), Nicole Meah Pamintuan (girls 13-17 100-meter backstroke, 1:08.35) and Mervien Jule Mirandilla (boys 12-under 50-meter freestyle).
But as NCR remained comfortably perched atop the medal tally board after nailing a 12th gold medal that went with nine silver and three bronze medals on Tuesday, athletes from the Cordilleras and Ilocos region started to make their move to bring their teams to the gold-medal column.
Western Visayas (7-6-7 gold-silver-bronze), Southern Tagalog (6-2-10) and, this time, the Cordillera Autonomous Region (3-8-1) stood at second to fourth places on the tally board.
Daniella Daynata contributed to NCR’s haul when she won gold in girls’ secondary discus throw with 32.07 meters. Cordillera Autonomous Region’s (CAR) Kayla Bugati clinched silver with 30.70 meters and another NCR bet, Precious Atienza bagged bronze with 30.41.
Christian Reyes topped the boys’ secondary and Nathaniel Balajadia the elementary events of anyo of arnis for Western Visayas’s two mints for the day. Cordillera also reaped in arnis with Twinkle Domingo ruling the elementary girls’ individual event.
Lovely Tawingan won gold in arnis girls’ anyo solo baton and Jason Jabol (5.61 meters) in long jump of boys’ elementary for Bicol region. Ilocos region earned its two gold medals on Tuesday from Danilo Pastoral in arnis’s anyo individual event double weapon for secondary boys and Kristian Joyce Trinidad (4.89 meters) in long jump of elementary girls.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes