PHYSICAL fitness is seldom discussed in a media forum focusing on the daily issues such as the Davao Press Club (DPC) news conference held regularly every Monday at Cafe Rysus of SM City Mall.

But this time backpage-relegated, less controversial action sports occupied a major portion of the time because Coach Darren Evangelista, the smooth operator of Davao City's biggest, most consistent swimming and event organizing group the Evangelista Aquatics, was there.

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In tandem with Chairman Vargas of the Chamber of Real Estate Builders Association or the famous Creba, both panelists held sway with new ideas on how to improve on the lives of poor coaches and players thru Entrepreneurial Sports.

Their partnership lies mainly on Vargas working on a memorandum of agreement with the Philippine Retirement Authority so as not to drive away retiring foreigners and lonesome expatriates but allow them to spend the rest of their lives here and make Davao City as their Blue Zone by eating the aphrodisiac physical therapists, I mean, durian and practice the Magsaysay-Park-to-Queensland-Motel, bay-breeze famous Tai Chi sports through the scientific mentoring of Darren Evangelista.

Darren knows from whereof he speaks. He has sports for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same breadth as Tony Ajero, host of DPC show, has mastered the rudiments of news production morning, noon, nighttime even up to the wee hours of the night and at dawn as publisher and editor.

I know how Tony Ajero works in media and newspapering longer than I have known Coach Evangelista's mixed sports and business acumen. As then budding reporter of UMBN's dxMC and the state-managed Philippine News Agency, we have been together since 1979 with Ajero as station manager of dxMC which is now dxUM, Ely Luciano (now managing editor of Superbalita) of the famous, flawless Eveready Newscast, and Rene Lumawag, who remains to be a top gunner of the Camera Club of Davao.

Lumawag's origin as a media person is actually his being a M.O.R (Middle of the Road) Sunday disc jockey playing both Andy Williams' Born Free and Eddie Peregrina's "What Am I Living For, If Not For You."

But make no mistake about it; Rene is many years behind the musical advocacies of the current dj personality remake called Hit Radio in Jimmy Torres and his longtime rival of the Vilmanian, Noranian-era, Bobby Diamante, who is now a card-bearing member of the Club FF, as in Forty Forever.

Back to Evangelista. This Mapua Institute-schooled civil engineer had his early beginnings as a champion NCAA coach of Perpetual College having met several times in the swimming championship as mentors such famous names in Philippine sports as the Olympian Eric Buhain and current Philippine Swimming Association president Mark Anthony Joseph.

His new sports advocacy is centered on the pronouncement that coaches and players have no business staying in such profession that demands excellence and hardwork if they cannot earn good money for their mental, physical and lung-busting efforts.

Evangelista wants to tilt the balance to our side knowing how Metro Manila's dominance in every aspect have taken away even the slimmest sporting chances of peoples, athletes and plain provincianos living outside of the National Capital Region.

Vargas, for his part said we can actually build a city not just through erecting high-rise condo units but also by making sports profitable for its major stakeholders.

True. It is only through sports that we can gather thousands in one setting, sports buffs, visitors, athletes and their parents, lolos and lolas including the yayas.

DPC Beat: Sports economy, hotels, restaurants and high-rise buildings go together in a growing city. - Carlos Vargas