Tarlac City hosts Palaro this April

CEBU, Philippines -  The 2010 Palarong Pambansa will be held on April 11 to 17 at the Tarlac Recreational Park in San Jose, Tarlac City.

The Department of Education (DepEd) has already concluded its Palaro technical conference in Tarlac yesterday.

Late October of last year, DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus said that they might not hold the event this year due to the calamity that hit some areas in Luzon, the next host of the Palaro.

Lapus told The Freeman then that DepEd’s priority is the rehabilitation of school buildings that were destroyed by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.

But with Tarlac’s aggressive efforts on its bid to host the country’s premiere inter-school sporting event, DepEd gave it a go.

It was reported that the provincial government of Tarlac will take care of the logistics and other services along with the event’s publicity, marketing and special events, civic participation and infrastructure and engineering and would tap volunteers for the food production, hosting of delegations, agro-industrial fair and other activities.

This year’s Palaro will feature 15 sporting events in the elementary level and 17 in the secondary division.

The sporting events are archery, arnis, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball, boxing, chess, football, gymnastics, sipa, sepak takraw, softball, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, and volleyball.

Based on its general guidelines for this year’s Palaro, all ballgames will have a uniform elimination round format while racket games will have a team and individual events.

For combative sports, there will not be an arnis competition for girls with five categories to be contested in while taekwondo will now both have the Kyogi or sparring and Poomsae of forms competition as boxing will have two weight categories in the elementary level and three in the secondary level. – Caecent No-ot Magsumbol   (FREEMAN NEWS)