Paris Olympic Games reignite mother and child bonding
As a young girl, I enjoyed listening to my father converse with my brothers about basketball. My father was a basketball scholar from Taal, Batangas, and played to get ahead with his college studies at Jose Rizal College in Manila.
Later, as I watched from the sidelines, I listened to all my four brothers exchange opinions on star players, promising rookies, good and lousy coaches, and stellar game strategies, in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, University Athletic Association of the Philippines, Philippine Basketball Association, and the National Basketball Association. They bonded well with these exchanges, perhaps better than their quips about girls, and crushes, which they often kept to themselves.
It was good to have sports in the family. My mother, my younger sister, and I had joined in, more as spectators. My mom and I shrieked a lot while cheering on our favorite teams. I think my mother got this from my grandmother who enjoyed watching boxing matches on TV, with a relaxing bottle of alcoholic “shoktong” in hand. Our high-pitched cheering was just the way we let out our pent-up energies, frustrated over lost points by favorites or exulting the good ones.
In my own family now, I continue to reap the benefits of having sports in our lives. I strove to keep family members engaged in sports, inspired by these bonding moments, among other reasons. I was joyous when my husband, Nilo, started to take up golf, sedentary as he was during the early years of our marriage, focusing virtually 24/7 on his passion as a newspaper editor. He had assured me that eventually he would take up sports. He was himself a sports editor at Silliman University.
These days, golf updates get a lot of buzz, especially now that our sons who played soccer for Ateneo and UP varsity teams are redirecting their energies to golf. Other sons join the golf fray while pursuing jiu-jitsu, running, weight lifting, swimming, surfing, diving, and yes, soccer and basketball.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, following the Philippines’ early gold harvest in gymnastics and our Philippine delegation’s finish in other events, I closely followed volleyball, both men’s and women’s.
In my elementary school days at the College of the Holy Spirit, we crowd-cheered on our volleyball teams. But at UP High School, I ventured to play volleyball for the varsity, not as a major player, I’d have to confess. I was a late entrant to the team since I only decided to try out for slots left by some players. I became a defender, whose task was to receive spikes and send balls to the setter.
Our team stars included lanky Peachy, the daughter of the Madrigal Singers founder and National Artist Dr. Andrea Veneracion, who later was crowned Mutya ng Pilipinas World; my pals Dr. Marianne Dayrit-Sison, a multi-awarded professor in Melbourne; and Atty. Winnie Pineda, who has a pedigree in corporate law. Peachy’s height certainly helped, and importantly, she was able to open up her body during a jump to prepare for a good spike. I believe I would have become a very good player had I started earlier. Nonetheless, intimacy with this sport later yielded other delights.
Liberos of Paris Olympics
I supported one of our seven sons, Kippie, in his decision to shift from being part of the Ateneo de Manila elementary school tennis team to joining the high school volleyball team. At first, I did not approve of the move. I had invested a lot in being his chaperone, driving him around Metro Manila for the tennis tournaments, as well as squeezing in some extra funds to buy him the latest in tennis racquets and rubber shoes. Some of the school venues were located deep in the heart of Manila, making parking difficult. Unlike other sports, where many team members are joining a single event, tennis matches are either singles or doubles. Thus, parents had different schedules for bringing their children to the matches. It did get lonely heading out to the matches and sitting and waiting for the games to finish on unfamiliar benches, though these somehow allowed me time to scribble notes on melding dogged practices with victories, struggles, and life discipline.
In terms of numbers, volleyball was more fun. And Kippie, who would later decide to change his pronoun from he to she, was in much better company. Some players, although very good in the sport, were not very masculine. Kippie’s Ateneo High School varsity team had a fair amount of wins and bagged the bronze medal for the UAAP Juniors’ Volleyball in 2013.
He was the libero of his team. Though he wasn’t tall, Kippie made good use of his gift of a very good hand-eye coordination. He braced himself, received high-powered spikes from heavy opponents, and directed the ball towards the center for the wallops. I was wowed by his prowess. His dad and I made sure to be present in the weekend games, cheering on his teammates, who had begun to appreciate us as mainstay cheerers for the team.
The liberos in the Paris Olympics teams that I favored reminded me about Kippie and how proud I had been of him in that high school year when they won the UAAP bronze.
Fast forward to 2024, Kippie took advantage of her presence in Paris as a student pursuing a master’s degree in International and European Cultural Engineering. The academics part, she earlier finished at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France. She is currently interning with a tech company in Paris. It was timely that she moved to Paris a week before the Olympic Games, and thus, was able to get a good seat to watch in person the first men’s volleyball match between the powerhouse USA and Japan.
Our mother and child bonding with sports got reignited. How delightful it has been for me to chat with Kippie about the Olympic experience and the once-in-a-lifetime way of witnessing Paris in this fashion. We traded notes on players we liked, such as master spiker Nishida, good-looking Ran, and fuzzy-haired, amiable, and efficient libero Yamamoto. She sent me photos of the game, as well as of herself and the spectators, and videos of iconic Paris Olympics sites such as the hot air balloon “cauldron” and the popular Club France where games were live streamed outdoors and indoors to bargoers.
She told me the post-game story of unabashedly calling out the star players who gleefully responded with a wave, happily staying on at the arena to greet fans. A French girl who was beside her was pumped up by her gesture, and noted, “Elle a ose quand meme! (Wow, she’s daring). She later asked Kippie to take pictures of her with the players.
“I can’t let this pass, Mom. This was years in the making,” Kippie texted. Of course, how can I forget? I know how hard Kippie worked on her French, as well as her German, through those many pandemic months, staying alone in her room and diligently taking online language lessons. One day, still in a pandemic month, she shared with me the email of her acceptance to the French university for her master’s studies.
We continued to exchange notes about upcoming matches leading to the quarterfinals and semifinals, involving men’s and women’s teams such as China, Brazil, Turkey, Italy, and Poland.
I texted Kippie the heartbreak I felt when Italy won against Japan in the semi-finals, even though Japan dominated the first two sets. , with Italy rallying to win the next two, and eventually winning the deciding fifth set in a neck-and-neck race. I’m Asian and I certainly sided with Japan.
I started writing this piece as the finals approached. I say the outcome does not matter now. What matters to me is how sports has integrated into my family life. In Kippie’s case, it is how sports is bridging our physical distance and strengthening our bond in a manner that’s exciting and suspense-filled.
Ruby is a depth communications practitioner who melds depth psychology approaches with media and public relations consultancy. She was a former president of the Carl Jung Circle Center (CJCC) and the course director of the CJCC-Depth Institute of Asia’s certificate course, “Kayamanan, Deep Stories of Self.” She was also a former features editor and human resource manager at the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
