This time backed by the Department of Education, the Philippine Sports Commission has scaled down its prospects to 10 or more sports in a bid to provide promising talents the opportunities to excel and to compete.
“The other advantage is that it is also not expensive,” PSC chairman William Ramirez said Wednesday in Davao City.
Ramirez said swimming tops the list, followed by track and field, weightlifting, women’s sports, archery, surfing, cycling, athletics, taekwondo, boxing, judo and arnis.
He said emphasis will also be placed on team sports where discipline more than height accounts for success, citing the experience of South Korea and Japan.
Ramirez said the format is similar to that of South Korea that focused on 10 sports and that of Australia that settled for 15 sports to develop.
He said swimming holds a lot of potential for a country composed of 7,000 islands and a population of more than 110 million.
The PSC and the Dep-Ed are locked in a two-day strategic planning in Davao City that sought to hammer out a collaborative plan that will develop young athletes from the elementary to the high school level.
The partnership was spelled out in a memorandum of agreement inked by both parties last month.
“Benefitting from this partnership, we intend to flesh out a curriculum that will give promising talents the science of sports to include scientific coaching,” said assistant Secretary Revsee Escobedo of the Dep-Ed.
The PSC is focused on grassroots sports while the Dep-Ed is concentrated on school sports. The collaboration will fuse the resources of both parties to develop athletes, train coaches, and to tap expert training and methods abroad.
Ramirez said the collaboration is considered a milestone and gives a new sense of direction for the 28-year old PSC.
Under the MOA, the Dep-Ed will provide facilities and the links with local government units. The PSC, on the other hand, will upgrade the coaching skills of teachers and coaches and provide the sports science need to upgrade skills.
“We will call on the United State Academy of Sports time and again to help provide academics in sports by providing our teachers and coaches the opportunity to earn masterals or doctorates in sports,” he said. (JKL)
