JOURNALISTS were one big happy family in the successful staging of the 16th Lapanday Foods Corporation Tri-Media Bowling Tournament at the B3 Tenpin bowling lanes of the NCCC Mall Davao City.
For a total of 9373 pinfalls shared by all four teams in the winning column, double that number to include eight other teams, everybody is a winner.
Nobody went home empty handed with the Island Sun wrapping off the day's highest prize as the new champion with a total of 2481 pinfalls in the average 827 total pins busted per game of the 12-team, 3-game tournament. The rest of the championship quartet are Royal 2381, Aloha 2316 and Manna 2195.
The win had proven once more the athleticism outside of the announcer's booth by GMA TV and Superadyo's Jun Digamon, Lito delos Reyes of Scoop and NBN's Susan Paredes, my mentor in duckpin bowling.
Paredes registered the highest pinning at a breakaway 174 and in the process broke the winning streak of Edith Isidro of the Philippine Information Agency, who had held sway in this event of the distaff side for the umpteenth time.
Allan Abais of ABS-CBN DXAB took the same route in the male side with a record 202 pinfalls, the highest single ever registered in the 16-year history of the games eclipsing closest rival Darius Relatado's previous 169 and the rest of the 169ers.
The latest event augurs well to our preparation for the city's next big event which is the colorful and cultural Kadayawan 2010.
The media sports gathering went on through the night with Roan Abasalo of the City Information Office making everybody happy with his antics and emceeing talent.
Raffle prizes were also distributed to those lucky winners and sweet pineapples for all to try at home, part of the bounties of the city's blessed weather condition according to Francisco Lorenzo of LFC.
Media have been used to just writing the events. The mode is different when it is the LFC tri-media bowling considering that we both make the news and report the same like what novice media personality Divina Morales is doing. Divi anchors our games in the distaff side in our team that had DJ Joe Black (Jon Develos) and Henry Palomata of Radyo Ng Bayan as the skipper.
LFC's main partner government agency of the all-media tournament in Mindanao is Director Efren Elbanbuena's PIA XI, the group that originally conceptualized the event from its original playing format of using the smaller duckpin.
The all-media sports fellowship is being observed annually at the date and time most convenient for media since everyone is busy grinding for the daily news report.
After the merry, parading, sporting month of August, the next is already September.
LFC Beat: See you in Christmas. (Leo Montalban)