Sports Eye
Vidal explains
By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.
HOURS after copies of the PUNCH’s last week edition came out in the newsstands, University of Luzon (UL) basketball team head coach Renato “Jack” Vidal called me up to clarify the issue that I wrote about in this corner pertaining to the selection of National Students Basketball Championship (NSBC) regional representative. His point of view was clear but lengthy, so I had to tell him to text his clarification to me because I might forget the details (I’m fast getting old) and may miss out on some of the details. He complied.
This was his explanation: “The National Students Basketball Championship is being held yearly and organized by the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP). This year is its 64th edition and to be held on February 27-March 3. We are lucky that our place Dagupan City as the BAP region 1 office will host the prestigious event to be conducted at Stadia under the leadership of regional director Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez. UL who is the only member of BAP here in Dagupan City since 1998 was chosen anew by the BAP national officials to officially represent the region in the national competition because the only other institution member of our region the Divine Word Colleges of Laoag (DWCL) declined and had already given the way for UL as our region’s representative. There’s no handpicking here, dictatorship, scheme or elimination this year but I believe next year there will be qualifying tiff because of the latest entries of Urdaneta City based Pan Pacific University of Northern Philippines (PUNP), University of Eastern Pangasinan (UEP) of Binalonan and Pangasinan Merchant Marine Academy (PAMMA) of Dagupan City. Unlike us which we have only two school members in the region ot like in other places like Cebu, Davao, NCR, Bukidnon, Cagayan de Oro and other regions who have a lot of institution members in BAP and so were asked to conduct an elimination round to represent their region, respectively. And whoever wins the national championship, BAP which is affiliated with Federation of School Sports Association of the Philippines (FESSAP) said will represent the Philippines in the Asian University Basketball Championship (AUBC) in Kual aLumpur, Malaysia this coming June. The national competition is school based and prohibited to capture some players from different schools from your region to beef up the lineup of the team, dissimilar to the PRISAA format.”
Vidal also clarified that the winner of the ongoing 3rd Jimmy Fernandez Invitational Cup will represent our region in this year’s National Men’s Colleges Athletic Association (NMCAA) Meet in Naga City scheduled on March 26 to April 1, contrary to what was reported here in this paper’s November 27 issue written by Philamer Celi.
When told about this, Lyceum Northwestern University (LNU) head coach Angel Gumarang said, “if we only knew that the JFC tournament is not an elimination round for the NSBC (in contrast with Celi’s report), we should not have joined the tourney. Or in the other way, they should have also invited us to join the BAP like what they did to PUNP, UEP and PAMMA because honestly we are also yearning to represent our region in national competitions, if we’ll pass the test, but we never received any invite. I guess they deliberately did not invite us to join the BAP because they know that we are always a hindrance to them in any competition.”
If asked, my opinion is let UL do the job this year because it’s already there and nobody can do the post except them. But as Vidal promised, there’ll be elims for next year’s national tilt so everyone will have a lot of time to apply for BAP membership to enter the qualifying tiff. Amen.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK: For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be desolate; yet I will not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black, because I have spoken. I have purposed and will not relent, nor will I turn back from it. JEREMIAH 4: 27-28
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