EXPECT the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi) to employ tougher security measures when long-time rivals University of the Visayas Green Lancers and Southwestern University Cobras collide anew in the 2013 basketball season.
Security will be even tighter if the two teams again make it to the finals this year.
This will help, or at least restrain the players or anybody from the bench from igniting a brawl.
In the municipality of Alcoy last July 16, the game was stopped after players from both sides engaged in a fistfight. It was only stopped when the police fired a warning shot into the air.
“As for that incident, we cannot penalize or impose sanctions on anybody. Because in the first place, that game was not sanctioned by the Cesafi and all we heard are just accounts from somebody. But I assured both sides that we will take this matter seriously.
We will increase our security when these two teams meet,” Cesafi Commissioner Felix Tiukinhoy Jr. told Sun.Star Cebu yesterday.
On the other hand, SWU corrected the statement of Cesario Casto, a member of Alcoy’s Sports Committee, that was published in Sun.Star Cebu last Monday.
“That was not necessarily true. In the first place (Mark) Tallo was not involved in the fight. I held him myself because I feared that there might be sanctions. He is our star player and we really need him,” said SWU’s head cashier Edix Aznar Ramos, the only member of the Aznar clan who accompanied the team in the Alcoy exhibition match.
Ramos claimed that what Castro had written was not all true, but admitted that it was Monbert Arong who instigated the fracas.
Trouble
“While it is true that Arong started the fight, he just reacted when he was hit on the chin by the elbows of (John) Abad. UV players initiated the trouble when they started roughing it up with our players. And (UV’s Francisco) Arong tried to restart the trouble after the police fired the warning shot,” Ramos added.
Ramos said he wants the commissioner’s office to put up additional security —policemen and bouncers—when the two teams meet in the 2013 Cesafi regular season. The first UV-SWU meeting will be on Aug. 17.
The next encounters would be in the semifinal round, and if they make it, in the finals.
“But I doubt if they will be as aggressive in the regular season. We have very strict rules with stiff penalties. They’d be behaved enough not to get themselves in trouble. But if they want to fight, then I’ll have to convince the board to put up a boxing competition, exclusive for basketball players,” said Tiukinhoy.
Meanwhile, Tiukinhoy, his deputies Danny Duran and lawyer Marvin Panares and head referee Ed Aguelo led the mandatory drug testing for the commissioner’s office and the 35-man officials and table officials at the LH Prime Medical Clinic in in Mandaue City.
The results of the test will be known later this week while the drug testing for schools will come un-announced.