Thursday, September 28, 2006 Team Cebu City leaves for Bacolod today By Marian C. Baring Sun.Star Correspondent
TEAM Cebu City Football will leave for Bacolod City this morning to take part in the PFF Men’s Under-19 Visayas Regional Finals, which had moved its Sept. 27 play date to tomorrow at the West Negros College football field.
The team is being supported financially by Cebu Football Association and the Cebu City Sports Commission, through football director Ricky Dakay.
Councilor Jack Jakosalem, who heads the council’s committee on sports and professional gaming, said the city would be providing for the transportation and uniform of the team.
“This is the first time that the city will be backing up a football team competing in the regional level,” Jakosalem added.
Support
The support came as a pleasant surprise for CebuFA president Jonathan Maximo, who is straining to make both ends meet for the organization.
“That is good news. I had advised the team management to find ways to get support from other sectors because the CebuFA budget is tied up to other events that we are organizing,” Maximo said.
CebuFA has been organizing coaches’ and referees’ courses on top of a handful of local qualifying tournaments in Men’s Open, Women’s Open, Men’s U-19 and futsal teams.
CebuFA has been able to send a team in every regional event every year since Maximo assumed office in 2003.
The team, which is coached by Francis Ramirez, is gunning for at least the top two slots in the three-day competition in order to advance to the national final.
Cebu will be playing in a round robin against only three teams, after Capiz backed out at the last minute. The other teams taking part in the competition are Bacolod, Dumaguete and Iloilo.
Bulk
The bulk of the players making up the Cebu City team are members of the Abellana National School-Hiroshi FC, which had dominated in the Aboitiz Boys-18 that had served as the qualifying event.
Ramirez had tapped the services of players from University of the Visayas, University of San Carlos, Paref-Springdale and Cebu International School.
Most players are the same members, which had represented Cebu in the Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association and Palarong Pambansa meet, but Michael Sharpe of CIS is the most veteran Under-19 player having represented Cebu two other times.
Last year, he was with Springdale’s Roy Joseph Sembrano, Jose Paolo Pascual, Benedict Arriola of Springdale, where they finished third. He also competed in the 2004 nationals in Cebu.
