THERE’S an interesting development over at the University of San Carlos football program, and it involves the stepping in of the alumni in their high school program. Coach Allan Medalla of the USC college team, which won the national title in the Private Schools Athletic Association national meet, has taken over handling the high school program, while Edwin Arganza will take charge of the elementary department.
USC will also put up futsal teams in both high school and college, something that I hoped would be copied by the other Cesafi members now that girls futsal is part of the calendar of activities. USC was the first to put up a girls football team in 2000 but had to let go of the program since there wasn’t any competition for them.
With girls football picking up in the last few years, more and more girls are getting into the sport and from a heavy tournament schedule in high school, the college scene isn’t as active. Hopefully, Cesafi’s inclusion of girls futsal last school year changes all of that. Before USC, it was only St. Theresa’s College of Cebu and Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu that had active girls futsal programs, and that both teams are contenders in the national level shows how good our local players are.
Thanks to the generosity of alumni like Stanley Villacin and Rick Dakay, the USC football program gets its much needed boost before the Cesafi season opens this August, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
This year, USC is changing the opening of its school year from June to August and under the old program, two months into the school year is just about the time when its football teams get formed. Without the college coaches and alumni stepping in this year, it would have meant the team would be competition-ready only by October.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that USC is going to dominate the high school scene. Far from it. A program like this needs four or five years to bear fruit so I hope this is the start of long-term development for USC sports.
Interestingly, this news coincides with a major change in the volleyball community, with one multi-awarded Cesafi coach taking over the USC program. All these changes in USC volleyball and football may make my friend in the USC basketball program think, hey, what about us?