We love using big metaphors in sports.
One of the favourites?
That coaching is like playing “human chess.”
It sounds clever, right?
A mastermind coach. A perfectly engineered system. Players moving exactly where they’re told, like pieces sliding across a board.
But here’s the thing:
People aren’t chess pieces.
And the moment we start treating them like they are, something breaks — sometimes quietly, sometimes catastrophically.
And that’s where things start to go wrong.
Because people don’t move in straight lines. They don’t follow fixed patterns. They don’t exist to be maneuvered. They get tired, they get scared, they get overwhelmed, and they also get inspired, creative, and unpredictable in the best ways.
Treating them like chess pieces strips all of that away. It reduces them to roles instead of individuals, and once that mindset settles in, you stop noticing the warning signs — the fatigue, the hesitation, the quiet “I’m not okay” that never gets said out loud because the culture doesn’t make space for it.
That’s why the tragedy involving Rene Baterbonia and Divine Andili hits so hard. Two young athletes, full of promise, lost during a team-building activity that should have been safe.
Authorities have said there was no hazing, no foul play, no malicious intent. But even without malice, something in the environment made them push themselves past the point where instinct should have told them to stop. And that’s the part we can’t ignore.
This is what happens when a system — even unintentionally — values obedience over communication, performance over well-being, and the “program” over the person.
No one sets out to create that kind of culture, but it grows quietly when the focus shifts too far toward control and away from care. When athletes feel like they have to endure instead of speak up. When they believe that pushing through is the only acceptable answer.
Rene and Divine weren’t pawns on a board. They were sons, teammates, friends. They had lives waiting for them outside the gym, outside the season, outside the system. And their loss forces us to confront a difficult truth: even without cruelty, even without hazing, a culture can still fail its players if it forgets to treat them as human beings first.
As a sports journalist, I know real leadership isn’t about perfect systems or flawless strategies. It’s about paying attention.
Plain and simple.
It’s about listening when someone says they’re tired — or noticing when they don’t say it but their body does. It’s about creating an environment where athletes feel safe to speak, safe to slow down, safe to be human.
To me, the best coaches don’t just build teams; they build trust. And trust doesn’t come from control. It comes from care.
If there’s anything we need to take from the loss of Rene and Divine, it’s that the metaphor of “human chess” has no place in real sports. Chess pieces don’t have families. They don’t have dreams. They don’t collapse from exhaustion. They don’t die.
Athletes do.
And that’s why the culture has to change — not out of blame, but out of responsibility. Out of love for the game and for the people who play it. Championships can be won again. Systems can be rebuilt. Seasons can be replayed. But lives, once lost, don’t come back.
And that’s what we’re all feeling so painfully about losing Rene and Divine.
If their story leads to a sports environment where every athlete is seen, heard, and valued as a person first, then Rene and Divine will have changed the game in a way no trophy ever could.
Person first before program.
