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Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Dino Sanchez reports on P380-M Butuan Coliseum
By Romy Sabaldan
Davao Beat
BUTUAN City, where I spent the first two years of my life on earth, is the next big beneficiary of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's youth and sports infrastructure development.
Dino Claudio Moran Sanchez, city councilor of Butuan, hinges his hope on the sure-fire commitment of Arroyo to push through with the planned P380-million Butuan City Coliseum, which he said would greatly boost the city's sports consciousness.
If plans do not miscarry, the sports infrastructure is the next best thing that will happen in Butuan in sports after the city made its presence felt in badminton by becoming the consistent number one all throughout the country from 1996 to 2003, according to Sanchez.
Sanchez, scion of the pioneering clans that built Butuan City into what it is today advanced above information during our Christmas family reunion.
He said that like in Davao, badminton is also very popular in his place and is in fact one of the fastest growing sports disciplines in the Northeastern Mindanao area some 400 kilometers away from Davao City.
I am not surprised considering that one of our city's influential moving figures in the development of badminton is from Butuan. The guy is the unassuming Charlie Gonzalez, the one who built one of the city's modern badminton courts--the one along San Pedro Extension called Smash 'N Drop.
Charlie's taraflex floor-equipped courts has been the venue of several national badminton tournaments the latest of which was the one organized by Ronnie Go and Major Dado Suarez of the Philippine Military Academy Alumni Association (PMAAA).
The tournament even received direct support from Malacañang and has afforded the PMAers based in Davao City to participate in the development of sports in the city.
Going back to Councilor Sanchez. The young Butuan legislator said that the CARAGA region's biggest sports coliseum would house a modern basketball court that will double as a multi-purpose venue for different activities including concerts. It will have a seating capacity of some 12 thousand with an outdoor tennis courts.
The biggest project, however, that Arroyo will be showering Butuan will be the P4-B international port which will be named the Port Magellan if the Spanish government will make good its participation in the building of one of Mindanao's biggest ports of entry.
Such project relives Butuan City's age-old kinship in a commerce and trade with Spain through the famous voyager Ferdinand Magellan, who some historians claimed had actually landed first in Masau of Butuan and not Limasawa.
Good luck and God bless Butuan City.
Badminton Beat: 2006 will be the busiest year for badminton in the Philippines with three international championships in the offing--General Edgardo Aglipay.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (December 28, 2005 issue)
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