Vicente: Keeping up in competitive times

GOOD LUCK to the Baguio delegation bound for Apayao on the 23rd. We pray for your safety and success in the Cordillera Administrative Region Athletic Association meet.

The world of sports is at its utmost peak when it comes to competitions, most especially in the martial arts community. Mixed martial arts is getting its share of the limelight with the popularity of the “Ultimate Fighting Champion” and here in Baguio the successful stints of our friends in Team Lakay. Our Lakays continue making raves in local and international competitions where recently Honorio Banario won the featherweight belt in the “One Fighting Championship” last February 2013 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia considered to be the largest MMA promotion in Asia.

Although short of international exposure, many of Baguio’s martial artists are in the thick of competitions all around the country, with events being stage in line with festivals featuring martial arts competitions including arnis, karate and taekwondo. Our athletes train continuously in anticipation of the consecutive tournaments that take place almost every month. More than this our athletes continue training for the Philippine National Games where the Philippine Sports Commission and the Philippine Olympic Committee discover athletes to form the national team.

A PSC official, “The idea of making the PNG an open entry competition is to give the talents of the provinces a chance to vie for the opportunity to be included in the national pool. We believe that there are many of them who are just waiting to be discovered, most come from poor families but are skilled and gifted with abilities that can contribute to the national pool. In every staging of the PNG everybody passes through the selection and must compete and win to either retain their status as national Team member or be discovered to be included in it.”

Organizers of tournaments saw the need to organize competitions prior to the staging of the PNG to help the athletes hone their skills not only in training but in actual competitions. And Baguio has those quality competitions that other teams from all over the country long to join, making the Summer Capital a true sports haven. To be in tempo with the fast development of skills in athletes, each must constantly be competing in tournaments to prepare them for the bigger ones. Competitions are part of training, training for a more important or grand event, the progress one athlete makes in training and his performance in competitions will predict the outcome of his stint in the grander one.