WHEN I heard Councilor Joy Young’s tirade against the Department of Education regional office last year, I thought that meant the end of the support Cebu City would regularly give to the Palaro delegation. And the support is substantial, consider the convenience Region 7’s athlete gets from the buses Cebu City regularly sends to the Palaro.
It’s good, though, that that wasn’t the case and, in fact, Cebu City will even spend P4 million to support the unified training for Region 7 in the Palaro. That’s very laudable, considering that Cebu City is but one of 17 divisions in Central Visayas. By doing this, Councilor Young is doing away with DepEd’s practice of being too “division-inclined.”
Consider the common complaint of team sports. Since players come from different divisions, you’d have players essentially getting differents kind of support from their divisions--from water to allowance to what have you.
“If we have Gatorade, it’s not for all. Or one player finds out his allowance isn’t the same as that of his teammate and they all belong in the same team,” one coach told me.
I guess, if Cebu City can take charge of the unified training for the athletes, I hope the regional office, too, will let them take the lead in marshaling the support for the athletes, so everyone in Region 7 gets the same.
How to do that? Simple. Just let each division match whatever support Cebu City gives to each of its athletes in the Palaro. For divisions that have only two or even fewer than 10 athletes in the delegation, that shouldn’t be a hard thing to do is it?
Let’s face it. Although Cebu City Hall is spending for this, it’s the regional office that will get the credit and it’s but fair to give those who work hard for this the free hand to do their job. Sure, the DepEd regional director may spread the credit around to the coaches and athletes but we all know that in the DepEd hierarchy, the director gets the lone credit should Cebu City achieve its target of jumping from ninth place to fourth place.
I believe the unified training is a big help for Cviraa. Just look at what it did for Cebu Province when it adopted this last year. It resulted in a second place finish for them. This year, Cebu Province didn’t do as well but that may be because of the return of the Negros divisions to the fold.
One other thing this act by Cebu City shows is that weeks before the Palaro, it is already taking a team-first approach.