PLAYING simple games outdoors has unfortunately become an unusual practice today with the advent of technology - kids including us adults tend to lurk indoors with our gadgets most of the time.
We have forgotten how our old school Larong Pinoy brought laughter and joy to us during the old times.
To bring back the fun and excitement of traditional Filipino games that we used to play, the Professional Schools of the University of Mindanao held the 1st Professional Schools (PS) Day last January 20, 2018.
The theme of the event is "B2B: Back-to-Basic" where more than one thousand professional students compete in Quiz Bowl, The Voice of PS, Cheering, tug-of-war, candle sack race, kadang-kadang, and patintero.
As they compete, students and professors looked like young children whose happiness cannot be explained in a thousand words.
They seemed to have completely disregarded for a moment their roles as students and teachers, in the field, they were all playmates and that was really a good scene to behold.
Far from their usual corporate attires, master and doctoral students in six different clusters including Engineering (Orange Team), Offsite (Fuchsia Team), Education (Blue Team), Business Administration (Yellow Team), Arts and Sciences (Green Team) and Criminology (Maroon Team) suited up with their respective team color shirts.
Some participants came all the way from cities like Surigao City, General Santos City, Cateel, Davao Oriental, Cotabato City and Bacolod City.
The program opened with a parade of colors followed by zumba, opening ceremony and cheer competition.
Traditional games like tug of war, patintero, takyan, kadang-kadang, dampa and candle sack race spiced up the event.
Green Team ruled the tug of war and Quiz Bee competition. But, Blue Team emerged as overall champion, Fuchsia Team 1st runner up, and Green Team 2nd runner up.
UM professional school dean Eugenio Guhao Jr., in an interview with Sun.Star Davao at the sidelines of the event, said they themed the sports event "Back to Basic" to patronize Filipinos' traditional games.
"This is also to remind our graduate school students with the basic games because some people often forget about our traditional games," Guhao said.
Guhao, however, planned to merge the professional schools day to next year's school year, saying: "To allow our graduate school students to enjoy the games with our undergrad students."
He said more games will be introduced in next year's event to foster the spirit of teamwork and camaraderie among graduate students.
He then thanked all the faculty members, program coordinators and everyone who took part of the event to achieve another successful event devoted for professional school students of UM.
The UM Professional Schools is offering Master in Business Administration, Master in Public Administration, Master in Environmental Planning, Master in Library and Information Science,
Master in Management, Master of Science in Social Work, Master of Science in Economics, Master of Science in Criminal Justice, Master of Science in Information Science, Master of Arts in Communication, Master of Arts in Education, Master in Engineering Program, Doctor in Business Administration, Doctor of Education, Doctor in Public Administration,
Doctor in Philosophy in Applied Linguistics, Doctor of Philosophy in Education, Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology, Doctor of Philosophy in Management. (With Adam B. Morrell)