Seeing track ovals

Taipei, Taiwan – When you travel to other places you can’t help but compare to your home. Atop Taipei 101 and on a foggy day at that, there were some things that I saw that made me wish I were looking down at Cebu – rubberized track ovals.

I counted four of them from what was visible early Thursday afternoon and I’m sure there must be a few more around the city that the fog covered from my view.

In Cebu, we only have one rubberized track that badly needs replacement.

Although some of the tracks I’ve seen here are the not full-size oval, which is 400 meters long, but even in the schools that we passed on our visits to the three plants of Tatung Company, I see that they have ovals.

While I believe it is not yet possible to have more than one track oval in Cebu, I continue to hope, like the many others, who use the Cebu City Sports Center regularly, that one day the CCSC will get a new track.

Of course the extensive road networks here are another thing that I’d love to see at home, but then that’s another story.

The only way to encourage more people to participate in sports is to provide the facilities for people to play.

We can hold as many summer basketball and volleyball tournaments that our PAGCOR Funds can afford, but then that is not true sports development. We need to do more than hold tournaments.

Forget that nonsense about using sports to combat drug abuse if you hold tournaments late at night when the participants, particularly the children are vulnerable to the predators that loom in the dark.

If you get into sports, it also entails discipline. Being disciplined to go to bed at the proper hour and get enough rest, eating the right food, following the rules set by parents and coaches and most of all the discipline to abide by the rules of the game that you choose to play.

I sometimes feel like laughing when I hear people talk about their interest to push sports and upon closer inspection you realize these are just mere words and not action.

How many times have you cringed hearing a politician talk of sports like he were real serious about it during the opening of a tournament? I bet it has happened to you so many times.

There, however, remains hope that someday there would be an honest to goodness sports development program that would be made and we will see the facilities, coaches, and sponsors available to help our athletes reach their potentials.

I just can’t help but dream when I see things that are great and we don’t have at home.

Hope is not yet lost, because we can still do it if we just try.

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MILESTONES: Happy birthday greetings to the Darna of our high school class, Irene Pamela Casals-Madarang, who turns a year older today.

The same goes to Dr. Rhea Melodia Taok-Kong, who is also celebrating today. (THE FREEMAN)

Congratulations to Lt. Col. Lope Dagoy of the Philippine Army and a proud member of the PMA Cebu Squad, Inc., who has been named as one of the Outstanding Philippine Soldiers for 2009. We’re proud of you sir!

More power!