James Yap and the legacy of Pres Cory

Today is the 40th day since the death of President Corazon C. Aquino on Aug. 1. At 12 noon today, churches all over the country will be celebrating the last of the 40-day novena of masses for President Cory.

To be sure, many have been touched by the life of simplicity, dignity and detachment from material possessions and power that President Cory led. Religious orders like the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Brothers, which shared the same advocacy for good governance with President Cory, especially in the last four years of her life, for one, will be giving the five children of Sen. Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino and President Cory (Ballsy, Pinky, Noynoy, Viel and Kris) and to President Cory herself, the Medal of St. John Baptist de La Salle.

One of those touched by President Cory’s (and the family’s) simplicity is Purefoods’ star James Carlos Yap who, himself came from simple beginnings in Escalante, Negros Occidental. Yap eventually married ABS-CBN host-actress Kris Aquino on July 10, 2005. On April 19, 2007, James Aquino Yap was born to James and Kris at the Makati Medical Center. But this is going a bit ahead of the story.

Prior to Yap’s breakthrough year in the Philippine Basketball’s Association (PBA) as the league’s Most Valuable Player in 2006, Escalante’s main claim to “fame” was the Escalante Massacre which claimed the lives of some 30 sugar workers, farmers, fisher-folk, students, urban poor, professionals and church people who were gunned down on Sept. 20, 1985 allegedly by para-military forces of the government. The rallyists were protesting the 13th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law.

Yap, who was then barely four years old, claims to have heard the gunshots as the incident happened not too far from his parents’ (Carlos Yap and the former Annie Agravante) home. How Yap emerged from the relatively small rural town of Escalante to the top of Philippine basketball through sheer hard work makes Yap another example of the self-made man that many of our youth in both the most miserable-looking sandlot and modern basketball courts all over the country aspire to be.

Perhaps, it is this single-minded determination to succeed and make a difference in the lives of people that endeared him to both President Cory and to Kris, who, from all indications, is certainly mommy’s child.

Yap’s love for basketball surfaced at an early age. At the age of seven, he and his friends in Escalante would play basketball under the boiling afternoon sun from 2 to 4 p.m. Yap recalls, “We had to play that early under the heat of the sun because by 4 p.m., the older and bigger boys would take over. That’s why I was so dark in my younger years but I developed real stamina and strength that allowed me to play for hours with very little rest.”

It wouldn’t take too long for Yap to attract the attention of basketball aficionados. One of them was his uncle from Bacolod, Emmanuel Yap, who brought him to the “big city”, Bacolod, where he studied at the Tay Tung High School. At 10, Yap was part of the Milo Best basketball camp in Bacolod. After one year at Tay Tung, Yap transferred to the Iloilo Chinese Commercial High School which was into basketball in a big way. The school had a huge dorm where 50 of the school’s athletes stayed and followed a regimen that included waking up at 5:30 a.m., cleaning their surroundings, attending classes and playing basketball.

Playing for Chinese Commercial earned for Yap a ticket to the Absolute team in the Jr. Philippine Basketball League (PBL). From 2001 to 2004, Yap played for the University of the East in the UAAP. By 2003, Yap had made waves in the PBL and was, in 2004, the second draft choice of Purefoods in the PBA. Yap suited up for a number of Philippine teams, among them the victorious national squad to the 2003 Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam and the Powerade team that competed in the Jones Cup in Taiwan and the FIBA-Asia championships in Tianjin, China in July.

In playing for the national teams, Yap intimated that his mother-in-law, President Cory, would always remind him that playing for the country was the greatest honor one can have. Yap would say, “Mom (Cory) was so supportive and would text me and wish me luck in each game. She would even recite one rosary for me whenever I have a game in the PBA or in international competitions.”

But for Yap, the truly outstanding quality she found in President Cory was her simplicity and faith in God, “Napaka simple at napakadasalin. You wouldn’t think she was President.”