RICO Navarro, the athletic director of Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu mentioned a troubling development regarding the Cviraa next year. He said, DepEd Region 7 released a memo requiring coaches to attend a seminar--at P3,500 a pop--before they could be allowed to coach in the regional meet.
That’s troubling because, according to Rico, the seminar could be the perfect way for some teachers to get the spots of the coaches who won their way to the Cviraa.
I also asked my friend Francis Ramirez, the sports coordinator of DepEd Cebu City and he said the seminar is one way to weed out fly-by-night coaches, which is also a good purpose.
But one thing that concerns me, is making the seminar a requisite for coaches to participate in the Cviraa. Isn’t winning the City or Provincial meet enough? Shouldn’t that be the requisite?
And who will be conducting the seminar? Coaches in Cebu who lost to the coaches who will be participating in the Cviraa? Experts from the national team?
And at P3,500 per head, the five-day seminar, which will be held during the Christmas break, is very expensive. How many officials are there in Region 7? 1,000? That’s P3.5 million for a seminar.
That is quite expensive.
I also saw the modules and while coaching ethics and legal responsibilities are useful topics, I don’t think that at the Cviraa level, these coaches need a course on the basic rules, interpretation of the rules and basic training.
These coaches won’t be at the Cviraa if they don’t know the basics.
So again, I hope DepEd reconsiders its stance on the seminar. It’s pretty late in the day to call it off, but I hope the officials won’t make it a requisite for the Cviraa.
Coaches also have personal lives you know and I’m sure a lot of them made plans for the Christmas break, only to have it ruined because they have to attend a course on topics they are already experts on.
Let those teachers who want to be coaches but have no knowledge on the basics join this seminar but don’t take away the spots of the coaches who won their way in the Cviraa.
If the teachers want to coach in the Cviraa, let them start at the bottom.
It’s how the coaches earned their stripes.