Naka Tunob II

Last Saturday’s opening of Tunob was a blast.

For the sake of those who don’t know what Tunob is, it literally means footprint in English and is also how the alumni of the University of the Philippines Cebu College high school are calling our version of the UP centennial celebration.

To those who didn’t make it last Saturday, you still have a chance to join this once in a lifetime event that is going to be capped with a dinner on Saturday night at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino ballroom.

Tickets for the dinner are sold at P650, but please try to contact the organizers if you are going so they can also make the necessary adjustments on the number of guests coming.

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Those joining the golf tournament on Friday are also advised to be at Alta Vista Golf and Country Club by 7 a.m.

Just a word of advice to those who haven’t played the course yet, duffers and scratch players alike — bring lots of balls.

See you all there.

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Last Saturday, I wrote about the men and women, who helped mold me into what I am now.

Although our academic load was quite heavy – all the term papers, reports, quizzes, etc. – fun was nevertheless an integral key to the education that we got.

My favorite subject back in high school was science as I had that dream of becoming an astronaut.  Of course Physical Education was also a lot of fun because I got to learn to play a lot of games, which I never had a chance to do so in my previous schools.

Our school gave us equal opportunity to learn and that included learning new sports.

I never touched a softball mitt my whole life until I got to UP High.  Despite this, I somewhat developed a lot of interest in the sport and played in our intramurals team in all four years of high school.

My only exposure to football before UP was playing kickball at the quadrangle of USC South (they called it Girls High then, but there were boys in the elementary level). 

At UP I learned to play soccer in the real sense of the world and in my freshman year understood that size and height was might as our team lost to the seniors in the championship match of our intramurals, which wasn’t at all bad as we managed to make it to the championship on our first try.

I also developed my interest in volleyball playing alongside our classmates, who would troop to the court after classes and play until it was too dark to see the ball.

Then there was Speedball, which was introduced by our PE teacher Mr. Jovenal Sagario during our sophomore year.  The sport is a combination of soccer, American football, and basketball.  Can you believe that?

We had a lot of fun playing it though like we had a choice as football was not included in the intramurals for two school years to give way to Speedball.

With very few students, we were all given a chance to try our hand in various team and individual sports.  If not for those four years of very active involvement in sports, I’d probably have been doing something else now and earning a lot more.  I don’t blame UP for my lost income opportunities though… hehehe.

While people from other schools probably thought that UP was creeping with nerds, they’re wrong, we were very sporty even if our basketball court forced players to be a bit creative on the dribble as the cracks would sometimes change the way the ball bounced.

We have limited equipment, but we had a huge field, which we now sorely miss as it is not there anymore, and most of all a lot of fun.

I’m really proud to say, ‘naka tunob ko!’