Sabaldan: Gov. Cagas is on his way to a fulfilling breakthrough in sports

COACH Ilde Cunanan's recent performance in elementary basketball was frustrating. The head coach of Holy Child School of Davao has been aching to have his boys being given a chance to play at the newly-refurbished Davao City Recreation Center.

One of the attractions perhaps is DCRC's NBA-standard modern floor cushioning. In the previous inter-media tournament, I fell, rolled from an uncontrolled fastbreak play in the new floor without injuries.

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The chance came for Coach Ilde's (11 year-old and under) ragtag team to show their wares. As Ateneo de Davao's perennial rival in basketball, Holy Child always takes the role either as dark horse or strongest contender.

But MVP Daryl Manliguez's Ateneo team has just changed the landscape of child basketball with Holy Child, once a passereile national champion beaten by a historic 60-point deficit.

However, passereile coach Roger Rabago has a reason for that. The team they sent to the highly successful Royal Mandaya Hotel Cup was hastily-formed in a hastily-arranged basketball tournament.

Even then, Glenn Escandor's RMH Cup has exposed the inadequacy of Holy Child in establishing a farm team where they can sourced out new potentials and give as much excitement and confidence to as many child players like what Escandor just did.

Meanwhile, Donna Timbal, the amiable Kapuso electronic news gathering reporter, has presented an exclusive report on the update that many of us in the sports community have been waiting for.

This is about the uniquely-designed P500-million sports complex now nearing its completion which comes with a promised of making Davao another venue of PBA's out-of-town engagements with a contract for the purpose already in the whole package.

Making the promise is Governor Douglas Ra. Cagas himself, main proponent of the project situated at the sprawling government center in Mati, Davao del Sur.

The potential is great and will make Davao del Sur a great showcase of regional sports. This is bigger than that of Mati in Davao Oriental and also comes with the full complement of a total air-conditioning system and a truly multi-purpose event center. Even in the raw footage showing the tall and imposing structure holds a lot of promise for Davao Region sports. We cannot, however, compare that to the Big Dome in the Araneta Center of Cubao, home of the country's top professional league.

When fully completed in November 2010, the sports-cultural complex can serve as the venue for homecoming games to a lot of homegrown talents in professional basketball namely Peter Jun Simon, Eman Samigue, Sunday Salvacion and John Paul Escobal, all of whom are playing in different teams of the Philippine Basketball Association.

Remember that Davao City is less than thirty minutes from the boundary of our southern neighbor even nearer from Calinan and Toril. We pray for the success of the sports program of Gov. Cagas. The sports arena can give us the opportunity and exciting reasons to reciprocate from our daily swarm of visitors from the south to our spacious malls and other places of recreation. Sports can actually reunite the whole Davao Region. An active engine of growth among so many works of progress that is complimentary to each other.

It is even faster to go Matti than travelling from UST to Pinaglabanan, official site of the battling Lady Eagles and Lady Tamarraws and the frontrunning San Sebastian College and Adamson University in women's volleyball.

We hope that the coming games in the area will also be an opportunity for many to discover DavSur.

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