Search up for national cage pool

In a nationwide search that will span 22 key cities in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, veteran national team coaches Dong Vergeire and Boyzie Zamar will seek out fresh talents for the national men’s basketball pool.

Dubbed as the RP-Cebuana Lhuillier Try-outs ng Bayan, the project, being done in cooperation with the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP), aims to scout for RP team-caliber basketball talents who will become part of the national training pool.

About 20-24 slots are reserved for the training pool, from which the core of the national team will be selected.

"It’s the start of a long-term program from which we plan to build the national team that will stay intact for the next three years," said basketball patron John Henri Lhuillier in the PSA Forum at the Manila Pavilion where he guested along with Vergeire, Zamar, and his assistant Danny Francisco.

"Instead of promising players going to Manila to try-out for the team, we will be the one to go to them as we scout for new faces," Zamar added in the session sponsored by Red Bull and Agfa Colors.

"This way, we will be able to reach out to more players in the country who may have enormous talent but are not given the proper breaks."

Try-outs ng Bayan is a two-pronged program aimed not only to seek prospective national players but also to reach out to young basketball aspirants through outreach basketball clinics.

The clinics will be supervised by both Vergeire and Zamar, together with four members —  Ricky Calimag, Dennis Madrid, Celino Cruz and Richie Melencio — of the core of the RP-Cebuana Lhuillier basketball team that won the gold in the last Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) in Vietnam.

The clinics are targeted at young basketball hopefuls, ages 12-17. Interested participants may check with their BAP regional office for registration details.

It is open to the first 70 registrants. On top of the rare opportunity to learn from seasoned coaches and play alongside national players, each participant will be given a certificate, souvenir basketball and T-shirt at the end of the clinic.

Mindanao will be the initial stop, with the cities of Cagayan de Oro, Davao and General Santos as venues.

The two-month-long program will then tour Iloilo, Dumaguete, Bais, Cebu, Ormoc and Tacloban in the Visayas before wrapping up the Luzon leg which will be held in Baguio, Pangasinan, Tarlac, Pampanga, Albay, Lucena, Batangas, Laguna, and Cavite.