ONCE upon a time, before enlisting in the military became an in thing for actors, it was the career path for non-basketball national team athletes of the country. Most of the football players and volleyball players were enlisted personnel in the army, navy or air force since that allows them to earn extra while serving the national team.

Back in 2005, when I covered the women’s national team in the Southeast Asian Games, I learned the captain was an enlisted army personnel, while before the 2010 Hanoi Miracle, most of the locals in the Philippine national football team were also enlisted personnel.

“Kung mag-gyera, sila na una ipadala,” was the standing joke from football friends about that trend.

That all changed for football in 2010, when the growing popularity led to the establishment of a local league, which began offering the local athletes six-digit salaries to sign up for their teams. That meant the locals could afford to be full-time athletes. I know a few who did just that, work as full-time athletes and quit as enlisted members of the military.

In volleyball, the military option was also no longer needed as the exponential growth of the sport led to the establishment of two domestic women’s leagues, giving the elite players a huge advantage.

But that option is not true for other sports. It seems a few members of the Muay Thai national team are enlisted personnel of the army, and the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) recently offered an online salute to five members who were called to the frontlines in Luzon—Irendian Lepatan, Preciosa Delarmino of the Air Force, Phillip Delarmino and James Daquil of the navy and Roland Claro of the Philippine Coast Guard.

The PSC shared a photo of the five, who were clad in full military gear, and that just shows the things some of the national team athletes have to go through just by wearing the country’s colors. These weren’t the type who had a camera crew with them in their enlistment process; they signed up and when they were called to service, they answered.

By the way, PSC chair William Ramirez, the most amiable of the PSC chairmen I’ve met, is stuck in Rizal, making sure the athletes who are also stuck in the dorms are taken care of. That’s an admirable move since before his time, the thrust of the PSC was to take care of themselves.

The chairman, the PSC’s general, stayed put.