Sad Reality in Philippine Sports (Part 2)
Philippine sports has a rich history. Today’s sporting landscape is nowhere near Philippine sports’ glorious past.
It is sad that the state of Philippine sports is deteriorating with only a few sports flourishing particularly, basketball.
Basketball is a game of giants and in a nation where average height is below six feet, we adore a sport event that is not appropriate for Filipinos, height-wise.
Yet our investments already paid off as we are able to participate in 2 World Cup competitions and 2 Olympic qualifying tournaments.
We are now in the top 30 teams in the world, a far cry from the ranking of the country in the International Basketball Federation 20 years ago.
It shows that sports in this country can be great if we invest a lot in it.
We tried to naturalize players in playing positions where Gilas Pilipinas is weak. This is the reason we took in Marcus Douthit and Andray Blatche who brought the country in 2 World Cup tournaments in Spain in 2014 and in 2019 in China.
Currently, we have Angelo Kouame, a 6-foot-11 center in tandem with 7-foot-3 Kai Sotto and 6-foot-10 Ariel John Edu ro man the front court together with Justine Baltazar and other big men.
The development of our big men did not come over night and it took a lot of investment to bring Philippine basketball to where it is today.
This brings us to the reality that we tend to invest a lot on basketball without realizing that we are neglecting other sports.
This is why our tallest female volleyball player Jaja Santiago is being “courted” by Japan to play for them because Santiago has a better chance to improve her career in international volleyball.
Our own volleyball program is starting compared to the vastly matured Japanese team.
The sad reality is that sports, being financed primarily by the private sector, only sees basketball and neglects other sports.
We only provide lip service to other sports where the country has a huge advantage.
We can cite gymnastics where the current world champion in the floor exercises is a Filipino-Carlos Yulo.
We invested in Yulo and now we have a world champion.
But Yulo is just one, we need to invest more in order to gain and bring back the glory days of Philippine sports.