CESAFI fairy tale?

Much has been written about the CESAFI 2010 basketball tournament; some good, some bad, some controversial. But it’s time for some feel good news, isn’t it? Enough of the controversies which don’t help unite the sports scene. The CESAFI’s coverage in media for the past decade has been primarily skewed towards the collegiate division, and rightfully so. With UV dominating the scene since the CESAFI was launched in 2000, that in itself was a story worth pursuing. Everything else is secondary. But not this year. UV is still up there in the news along with UC’s last dance for a championship with Junemar Fajardo, but there’s a bigger story behind all this, and ironically, it is literally secondary: the secondary division or the juniors.

CESAFI 2010 will be known as the year of two fairy tale teams that had turn-around seasons this year: Cebu Eastern College (CEC) and Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu (SHS-AdC). Believe it or not, both teams are playing in the finals of the high school division with Game 2 being played as we write this piece, and Game 3 to be played today. At the end of the day, regardless of which team wins the championship, CESAFI 2010 will be an important turning point in local high school basketball history. And the more interesting note is that both teams got to the top in contrasting manner.

The talk of the town is easily CEC’s amazing 180-degree turn-around from 2009. After not having won a single game in 2009 and maybe even dating further back, CEC is suddenly a powerhouse, having been the only team to have beaten every single CESAFI high school team this year. And all it took was a strong fist with an equally solid support group to get things done. With the able resources of Chester Cokaliong and Frederick “Lama” Ong, CEC went on an overnight binge to load up with the best possible talent of players and coaches. And so from Davao, Bacolod, Iloilo and Cebu have come the pieces of the puzzle that solved CEC’s woes literally overnight. Coach Jerry Jaranilla flew in from Iloilo to take the head coaching job with Cebuano Lou Regidor serving as a very able assistant. Nike Montalvo and Roy Villarias brought their Ilonggo accents via the Ceres Express from Bacolod, as BJ Zosa and Mark Olayon said goodbye to Davao. Adding Cebu’s James Sumayang and Johnmar Lou Regidor along with the other role players (Bauya, Nuevos) and voila! You have a potent powerhouse team. CEC did not want a medium to long term program. They went for an instant short term package to wipe out last year’s stigma of being the whipping boys of the juniors division. Get the best now was their slogan and so they did and here they are on the verge of a championship. While most of these players will not be available to play in 2011, I’m sure CEC already has another set of blue chip prospects waiting to fly in to Cebu in the summer.

On the other hand, the SHS-AdC program is one that took over five years to build. It was a slowburn ride to its current state with learning and painful baby steps taken along the way. It all started when the current core of the Magis Eagles were in Grade 4 when they played as an SBP (Under 12) team in age group tournaments. This current batch of 15-year old players who are juniors this year won their first major title at the Milo BEST SBP Passerelle tournament of 2007 when they won the Cebu and Visayas titles when they 12 years old. They placed second to Ateneo de Manila in the national finals of the same tournament. More triumphs came when the same group of core players won the Passerelle (Under 15) division titles for Cebu between 2007 and 2010 for a fourpeat. They also won the Visayas titles in 2008 and 2009 and made it to the national finals, falling to La Salle Greenhills. The likes of Adrian Muller (who was practically begged to join the team when he was in grade school), Reggie Abbu, Aaron Sing, Dandan Tecson, Franz Gabuya and Alex Lim have been in the program since their grade school days. The program then became attractive that it managed to bring in the missing pieces from within the school and other places/schools who blended in with the home-grown players. Bradley Bacaltos, Rebreb Diputado, Julius Cadavis and rookies Henry Asilum and Henric Ochea have made the team stronger. Abbu, Sing, Tecson, Lim, Diputado, Cadavis, Asilum, and Ochea will all be back in 2011 along with their other Passerelle teammates who didn’t make the juniors team this year.

The result? We see both teams slugging it out for the top and overcoming traditional strong teams like UV, UC, USJR and defending champions CIT. Who would’ve ever thought to see CEC and SHS-AdC in the finals together?

Now you tell me. Do fairy tales come true?

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Time-out: Happy birthday to Jaysar Esperat! >>> You can reach me at [email protected].