Football team, volleyball, table tennis players immortalized in Cebu Sports Hall of Fame

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

AUSTRALIAN football coach Graeme Mackinnon was considered as team M.Lhullier football team’s inspiration for winning the first national championship title in 1988.

And that feat 23 years ago made the team a legend. Fot that, the team, together with volleyball player Maribel Rusiana and table tennis player Federico Ybañez were ensrhined to the Cebu Sports Hall of Fame.

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For the M. Lhuillier team, the credit goes to Mackinnon for his belief in Team Cebu City.

“He was the only one who believed in us when nobody did,” Paref-Springdale coach Mario Ceniza said.

Ceniza said everyone, even the local governing body, the Cebu Football Association (CFA), doubted them.

Ceniza added it was Mackinnon who encouraged them to believe that they can make it.

“The best achievement we got was proving the detractors wrong. I saw so much potential in my team,” Mackinnon said. “We believed in 1988.”

Ceniza said although he feels bad that no Cebu team has duplicated their feat, he understands it is mostly not Cebu’s fault.

“It’s been 23 years. But there hasn’t been a national tournament in the past three years,” Ceniza said.

Optimistic

However he added they are optimistic that there is a big chance for Cebu to duplicate it because the CFA is aggressively implementing football grassroot programs.

“We hope it will be repeated in the near future,” Ceniza said.

Mackinnon and Ceniza were joined by Dante Orejudos,Allan Arcabal, Rene Maambong,Edwin Arganza, Peter Bordador and Wilfredo Juezan in receiving the recognition.

Honorees

The other honorees were Rusiana, who was a member of the gold medal winning volleyball to the 1979 Southeast Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia and 64-year-old Ybañez, who became a member of the RP table tennis team to the 1966 Asian Games in Bangkok, Thailand.

Ybañez was named the top table tennis player of the Philippines in the 60s. He was also enshrined in the Hall of Fame of the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) 10 years ago.

Ybañez, who is from Pasil, came from a family who loves playing table tennis. His father, Teofilo, was also a well-decorated table tennis player and was also named a Hall of Famer by the POC.

“It was my father who influenced me to get into the sport. I started playing when I was six and started competing when I was eight,” Ybañez said.