THE Cebu City Sports Center (CCSC) has proven itself to be a venue for most crowd-drawing events but their reliance on the CCSC has taken its toll on the athletes.
During the Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association, the track stars from Cebu City were no longer as dominant and struggled in the first three days.
Bernard Ricablanca, the athletic director of the University of Cebu, where most of the track and field athletes of Cebu City study, attributed the decline to the disruption of their training days before the regional meet.
The CCSC was closed for three days—just before the Cviraa opened—because it was used by a TV show.
“We had no other place to train and it was at a very crucial point of the training because it was just days before the meet.
That is why I believe we need to have a venue that will solely be used for athletes’ training,” said Ricablanca.
“We do not want to make excuses but I know how my athletes train. They do it all-year round. But that week was crucial for them,” said Ricablanca.
Ricablanca said the athletes’ training time at the CCSC oval is limited because of classes and the regular patrons who jog at the oval in the afternoon.
“The athletes can’t train in the morning because they have classes so they have to do it in the afternoon. But they can’t train past 4 p.m. because there will be a lot of people using the oval by then. So with the closure of the center, their training was surely disrupted,” said Ricablanca.
After the Cviraa, the top Cebuano athletes are now preparing for the Palarong Pambansa in April.
Meanwhile, Ricablanca will join Region 7 in the Ched National Games this weekend. UC will have athletes in athletics, chess, table tennis, karatedo, taekwondo, judo, lawn tennis and swimming.
The Ched National Games, which will start on Feb. 22 at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, is a merger of all collegiate meets and was last held in 2004 in Bacolod City.