LET’S GET IT ON – That flawed selection system

By Neil Bravo
The DAVRAA issue which we wrote here last Tuesday has reached the City Council and by next session, the controversy will be heard.
Let me bring you back to that fiasco. After the 2015 DAVRAA meet in Mati City where Davao City won the football titles in elementary and secondary to earn the ticket to this year’s Palarong Pambansa, a meeting was held by the Department of Education regional office to deliberate the selection of players for the Palaro.
In the said meeting, a DepEd official reportedly insisted on tabbing a number of players from the runner-up team and replacing some of the players from the champion team. It’s nothing new. It has been the practice of DepEd to make some configurations in the selection or there could be a consensus among coaches. Let’s call that “ragtag” formula which means getting all the best players from teams that figured in the medal battle.
The consequence of this ragtag system is that you deprive some players from the champion team to play in the Palaro.
But if you ask DepEd, it will insist on the ragtag formula no matter how flawed it is.
Imagine this. You have a champion team that will lose seven or eight or more players and take in some players from other delegations. Now once you have that, how do you expect them to train together. I mean here is a team from Davao City mixed with players from Davao Oriental. Where would they train and when?
That is the problem because you uproot players from one province and bring them to another city. If not, you just wait for days before the Palaro when school is over and start training. It is not only costly. It is ineffective.
Let me ask you. Who is more prepared and cohesive then? An intact team that continues to train after winning the DAVRAA or a ragtag team of a commixture of players who cannot be in one place to train because they live in different localities?
The problem here is that even if the system is flawed, DepEd still insists on following it because according to them that is the practice. It’s like saying the system is rigid and cannot be changed even if it is wrong from any way you look at it. No coach in his right mind will build a team from different pieces of puzzles.
Look, benchwarmers are not players of less talent. Whoever said benchwarmers are the lesser ones must have a twisted belief or is plain ignorant about sports. Benchwarmers or relievers are not throwaway players just because they do not belong to the starting unit. It does not mean they are less skilled. They have roles to play that only a coach can understand.
Come on. Let’s not insist on something that does not work. That’s the reason we have not won for a long time. In 1994 in Cebu, Southern Mindanao (now Davao Region) won the Palaro gold in football with a team built around players from one Davao City school. They trained, ate, slept, studied together like a family and that’s the reason they knew each other so well.
Again, I insist. It’s the coaches who know the players and understand the sport. Officials who ram their old school rules on coaches are like dictators who insist on a flawed system.
For once, junk that old rule and embrace what is right, practical and just.
Notes: Listen to “Let’s Get It On with Neil Bravo” on 105.9 Balita FM every Saturday 8-10 a.m. You may send comments and letters to this writer at bravoneil@rocketmail.com.