A FEW weeks ago, I wrote how Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. commissioner Felix Tiukinhoy is complaining how some Manila schools are forcing high school students to stay a year or two longer to maximize their playing years.
It’s a practice that has been going on for so long and should be stopped.
Recently, I learned that the University of San Carlos-Basic Education Department sort of benefitted from this malpractice. A few weeks before school started, they got a call from a distraught mother who wanted to remove her son from a major school in Manila.
The reason? He was told to repeat Grade 10 despite having excellent grades.
The coaches told her to bring her son to USC so they can check him out and I guess, the rest is history.
How good is the player? Well, in his first game he was deployed as a striker and his second he was the goalkeeper against Don Bosco Technological Center and coach Glenn Ramos was all praises after the game.
Coach Glenn approached the player after the game and I managed to listen to their exchange.
“Asa ka gikan, ‘dong? Nindot imo duwa.”
Aside from playing forward, coach Allan Medalla said he can be deployed as a defender too, giving USC numerous options with just one player.
Again, this wouldn’t have happened had his previous school not decided to let him repeat Grade 10.
And their reason was flimsy. He was the no. 2 keeper of the team—one of the best in the country—and since the no. 1 was going to Grade 11, he was asked to repeat Grade 10, so they’d have a starting keeper for the lower age group. The league’s age limit for high school is 20.
It’s stupid, but not illegal and I think it should be made illegal since I’ve heard of numerous other cases like this one before.
How can the Cesafi protect its students who get recruited by Manila schools from being made to repeat grade levels? I really don’t know if they can since recruiters usually bypass the school and go to the players or their parents directly.
But if a school is involved, then perhaps there can be some assurances that the academic needs of the students won’t be overlooked also.
I remember a few years back Sen. Pia Cayetano fought for the removal of the residency rule in high school and limiting it to only one year in college. Perhaps, there could be an amendment to that rule to make sure high school students are never made to repeat year levels just to maximize their playing years.