Friday, October 20, 2006 UC won’t join University Games in Bacolod By Marian C. Baring Sun.Star Correspondent
POWERHOUSE University of Cebu will be skipping this year's University Games, a weeklong sporting meet, which starts on Oct. 23 in Bacolod City.
UC athletic director Bernard Ricablanca said they never received any invitation from the University Games—an invitational tournament—prompting them to forgo the event.
The games draw a handful of universities from Cebu and 50 others from other parts of the country.
"We never really received any invitation from the organizers, so we'd rather focus our attention on other matters," said Ricablanca, who has killer teams in athletics, badminton and swimming, which has been UC's goldmine for years.
Ricablanca said that only after reading about it from the papers did he know that the meet is fast approaching. Only when he inquired about the event from a colleague from another university that a copy of the invitation—not the one intended for UC—was furnished to his office.
Few responses
University Games coordinator Roger Banzuela, for his part, said that for years, they have sent invitations to universities in Cebu, but only few responded.
"Palagi kami nagpa-padala, pero wala namang feed back. Now, we only send invitations to those who are interested and are sure of joining," Banzuela said.
Banzuela also admitted that the Cebu schools they invited are University of Southern Philippines Foundation (USPF), University of San Carlos (UC) and Southwestern University (SWU), after school representatives called them up to show intent of joining.
Banzuela, however, said that SWU, which was supposed to send its volleyball team, backed out.
The University Games features competitions in 11 events—athletics, badminton, basketball, chess, football, lawn tennis, table tennis, swimming, taekwondo, volleyball and sepak takraw.
"We don't have the luxury of time and we can't just take budget from anywhere, so we will just skip it and focus our preparation on two coming competitions that is already in the school's itinerary for the school year," Ricablanca said.
Focus
UC is now concentrating on two events that are under UC's calendar of activities--- the regional and national Private Schools Athletic Association (Prisaa). The regional Prisaa will be in December in Bohol, while the national edition is slated April of next year.
Minus UC and SWU, Cebu will still be represented by USPF and USC.
USPF will be sending its top bets in athletics and volleyball, while USC will field volleyball and football teams, whose men's troops recently bagged the titles in the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc.
