Sunday, November 02, 2008 Cesafi puts up P100K prize for Partners Cup
A P100,000 worth of sports equipment donated to the schools will be the newest feature in the third edition of the Partners Cup, the post season competition of the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi) slated to open on Jan. 4 next year.
“The partners will donate P100,000 worth of sports equipment to the Cesafi schools,” said Partners Cup organizer Felix Tiukinhoy.
The top three will get the bigger chunk of the prize as they receive P30,000, P20,000 and P10,000, respectively.
The top five teams of the recent Cesafi season, University of the Visayas, University of San Jose Recoletos, University of San Carlos, University of Cebu and Southwestern University will go into the tournament as the seeded teams.
Only players who can still play in the 2009 season will be allowed to make up the team for the Partners Cup and those players who will graduate this year will not be allowed to join.
Bottom teams Don Bosco College, University of Southern Philippines Foundation and Cebu Institute of Technology are allowed to beef up their line up with five players who are either among the graduating students or their former players.
The controversial Partners Cup was developed in order to give Cesafi players a competition once the Cesafi season is over and to prepare its players, especially the second stringers, for the next season.
Since the Partners Cup aims to improve the players without the schools having to shell out extra cash, the competition gets corporate sponsors for each team. The sponsors, or partners, will handled the budget. Winning teams will get P4,000 per game, while losers will go home with P3,000.
Learning from experience, when athletes got injured in the Partners CUp forcing them to sit out in the Cesafi, the Partners Cup will set aside P 100,000.00 as funds for injury cases.
The competition will still be spearheaded by former basketball pro and egend Ramon Fernandez, who will serve as the commissioner. (MCB)
