Entering its second century, NCAA out to widen playground
As the NCAA begins a journey to its second century, two goals have emerged for the country’s oldest varsity league: Go home and fly off to the world.
Season 101 opens Saturday with the NCAA hoping to build a grassroots base for potential Olympians, even as it treks back to the place where everything began.
League officials announced on Tuesday that the new season will introduce four Olympic sports that will be played in the second semester of this school year—weightlifting, boxing, gymnastics and golf. The sports will be played as demonstration events for now.
“We want to farm out the focus into those sports,” said Paul Supan, the Jose Rizal U athletic director who is the school’s representative to the NCAA management committee. “The past 100 years, the NCAA has been contributing to the national training pool; in basketball, swimming, track and field.
“If one of our students can get into the national team, represent the country and bring glory to the country, then it’s mission accomplished for us,” he added.
Supan said the four sports will go through the regular process before they can become part of the official calendar of events, including getting consistent representation from all member-schools for three years.
“The important thing is to get it started, bring [schools and athletes] together and see how we can develop [national athletes],” he said. “The NCAA is [focused on] grassroots and we want to ferry [athletes] to the elite level. Whatever we can start, we will start.”
“We want to give a chance to student-athletes who want to represent the national team,” said lawyer Lorenzo Lorenzo, the representative of Emilio Aguinaldo College (EAC).
Meanwhile, Lorenzo, EAC’s vice president for administration, said the NCAA is slowly finding its way home to Rizal Memorial Coliseum, its former hotbed that was home to some of the fiercest collegiate rivalries in the past.
“For now, the availability [of Rizal Memorial Coliseum] is still limited, but we are moving toward the direction of holding more games there,” Lorenzo said.
Coming home
“Bringing back games [to Rizal Memorial] will be nostalgic,” Supan added. “Old-timers will be able to reminisce the games that were played here.”
Season 101 will kick off with the men’s basketball tournament at Smart Araneta Coliseum with host Mapua taking on Lyceum at 2 p.m. and San Beda battling St. Benilde after.
The four demonstration sports have had a lot of success in the international field, with weightlifting, gymnastics and boxing producing medals in the Summer Games.
Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo, incidentally a product of NCAA school St. Benilde, won the country’s first Olympic gold medal when she ruled her division in the weightlifting competition of the Tokyo Olympics. Three years later, Carlos Yulo became the first double-gold winner of the Philippines when he ruled two events in the Paris Games.
Boxing, meanwhile boasts silver medalists such as Anthony Villanueva, Onyok Velasco, Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam.
