AFTER Chinese New Year and Ash Wednesday, it’s time for Valentine season. And today we’re in the mood to share with you two old-fashioned love stories from towering figures in the sports world. Legendary love stories, because they’re about two legends of Philippine basketball: one, a coach; the other, a player.
Both are fascinating tales because their courtship, marriage and long-playing relationships were conducted in a style very different from how today’s couples execute theirs.
The coach is none other than the incomparable Virgilio “Baby” Dalupan—he who is known as The Maestro of Philippine Basketball, idol and role model of many, including today’s winningest coach—Tim Cone—who surpassed The Maestro’s 52 championships, but still looks up to him as his inspiration.
Coach Baby’s love story started in 1947, when the Ateneo varsity team, for whom Baby played, visited Negros Occidental. At a prom in Iloilo, the young Baby met Maria Lourdes Azcona Gaston, nicknamed “Nenang,” who was chaperoning her sister Ting.
According to the book, when Baby and Nenang met that evening, he was smitten. Nenang was not interested at first, but Baby, who flew to Bacolod many times after that Ateneo team visit just to pursue Nenang, courted her in the old style. “Pinahirapan niya ako!” Coach Baby said. “I admired his persistence,” Nenang added. They both pursued studies in Manila though—he at the Ateneo, she at Saint Theresa’s College—and that helped to develop their relationship further.
“And so it was that this Tagalog and Negrense came together…,” the book, Virgilio “Baby” Dalupan: The Maestro of Philippine Basketball, says. “Baby fondly recalls that shortly after he and Nenang graduated, he introduced his parents to Nenang’s at the latter’s home in Pasay. He formally asked for Nenang’s hand in marriage.” “You two are now officially engaged. Take care of each other,” Nenang’s father told them.
On June 11, 1949, Coach Baby, the third child of Francisco Jr. and Lorenza Dalupan, who then owned the University of the East, and Nenang, the oldest daughter and second child of Jose Gaston and Consuelo Azcona of the Gaston sugar plantation in Negros, got married at Our Lady of Victory Parish Church in Victorias.
Their life has been a story of enduring love, shared responsibilities, riding the troughs and crests of life together, sharing life’s blessings, the greatest of which are their eight children—seven girls (Loulie, Binky, Ebing, Tina, Ann, Jo and Cecile) and a boy Victor (Toy).
Today, Coach Baby, 91, still spry mentally and as articulate as ever, but handicapped by vision problems, and his Nenang, still slim, beautiful and devoted, are still as inseparable as before. At the launching of the commemorative book, they looked like prom dates still, though older and slower. Theirs is a Valentine story for the ages.
The second love story is none other than that of the legendary and peerless basketball hero, Caloy Loyzaga and his lovely wife, Vicky.
Vicky Cuerva was a 17-year old basketball fan—one of many Filipinos, old and young—who marveled at the prowess of the phenomenal cager who had taken Philippine basketball by storm. Just the year before Caloy Loyzaga had brought the Philippines to its finest finish yet in world basketball—third place at the 1954 World Basketball Championship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was definitely the toast of the country.
The starstruck Vicky mustered all the courage she could at a San Beda game to ask a cheerleader friend to introduce them. But the dashing 6″3′, 200-pound cager did not pay much attention to her then. (Caloy thought she was too young.) One day, however, when he saw her in the company of a pelotari, Caloy was peeved and seemed ready to assert “ownership” rights.
Soon Caloy came a-courtin’, and another legendary coach—Tito Eduque—Caloy’s coach at Yco, egged him on to pursue Vicky.
Caloy would take Vicky out to dinner, sometimes with her mother! He would drive past their house and keep honking his horn like a lovestruck schoolboy. Vicky played it cool but was absolutely smitten. To make a long story short, he swept her off her feet. And as for Caloy, he knew from instinct that Vicky was The One.
One day he brought her home to his mother and declared: “Ma, you told me to bring my girlfriend here, the one I will marry. Here she is.”
Five days later they got married at San Miguel Cathedral (located within the San Beda area) and honeymooned in Baguio. They rode in a car lent to them by Baby Dalupan.
After the honeymoon the couple settled down to a simple life, with Caloy helping Vicky with household chores as often as he could. The Big Difference would sweep the floor and use a coconut husk to polish the floor. His tastes were simple. “He would eat galunggong, dilis, itlog na maalat with tomatoes and onions,” said Vicky. After helping with the chores, he would attend practice and report for work at Elizalde and Co., the company that owned Yco, Caloy’s team in the Manila Industrial and Athletic Association (MICAA).
Soon the little Loyzagas came one after the other: Chito, Princess, Joey, Teresa and Bing. Caloy would continue to dominate Philippine basketball and establish both team and national records that would remain untouched to this day.
Their love would remain steadfast and full of affection through the years. They were partners in the real sense of the word, always looking out for each other, supporting each other, never losing the roance that brought them together in the first place.
On January 27 this year the Big Difference passed on to the Great Beyond—Beyond. Till his last breath he was thinking about Vicky, who never left his side. Are there relationships today as solid as theirs? We certainly hope so.