http://businessmirror.com.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6798:international-pride&catid=31:sports&Itemid=65
(This appears in the Monday March 2, 2009 edition of Business Mirror.)
(This appears in the Monday March 2, 2009 edition of Business Mirror.)
(Inter)National Pride
by rick olivares
by rick olivares
If you go to the fifth floor of the Philippine Sports Commission’s offices located along Vito Cruz in Manila just adjacent to the Rizal Memorial Coliseum, there’s a wall that’s some ten to twelve feet long.
On the wall is a medal tracker for the various sports where the country sends its national teams to do battle. It also serves as an unofficial grading system for the various national sports associations.
Some sports do well, but when it comes to Philippines football, you could say that we’ve flatlined.
The graph ironically isn’t updated. If it was as of this writing then it should have reflected the slight blip before the sport slipped back into its prolonged coma.
The blip belongs to the former RP Women’s Futsal Team that won the country’s first futsal medal in the 2007 South East Asian Games in Rakhon Ratchasima, Thailand.
That team resigned en masse three weeks ago to protest the lack of professionalism and poor government that has taken root in the Philippine Football Federation, the oldest football association in Asia. But that’s a horror story that I’ve previously told; this is a feel-good one.
What are we doing here?
It was the sixth phone call Ria Tanjangco received from her parents and she was still in the airport. It was her first trip out of the country without her family and everyone was kind of anxious. The team was competing in the 1st Asian Indoor Futsal Championships in Bangkok, Thailand.
The team was excitedly waiting to board their flight via Kuwait Airways at NAIA -- “Because it was the cheapest flight there” – and Tanjangco’s folks were calling. She could hear her brother in the background saying, “Sabihin mo wag na sila tumuloy -- tatambakan lang sila.” Ria’s mother shushed her football/futsal-playing son when she asked him if his team has won anything as well.
Another teammate, Glenda Bascon was initially disallowed by her mother to go because she didn’t believe that she was playing futsal.
The trip was also the first for many of the team. One even wondered aloud if there was a stopover in Kuwait. The team was ill equipped for the tournament.
They purchased their fake Nike jackets (that had reflectors and swirls on them as part of the design) at Divisoria for Php 300 each. The Philippine flag patches were purchased at the military supply stores outside Camp Crame where they got no discount despite being a National Team.
Everyone had to sew their patches onto their jackets. But not everyone knew how to stitch them on. One used safety pins while another used duct tape. One even had the flag inverted with the red side up. It’s a good thing the Thai authorities didn’t notice or else they would have thought that the Philippines had sent a war party to the tournament.
They arrived at Bangkok at 1am and had a full day ahead of them beginning with the coaches’ meeting at 8 o’clock.
To the embarrassment of coaches Manny Batungbacal and Paul Encarnacion, they arrived at the meeting in sports shirts, shorts, and sneakers. Everyone else wore suits or semi-formal attire. “The whole trip, the tournament was a learning experience for us,” said a sheepish Encarnacion. “No one told us what we needed to do and to bring. In fact, even the captain’s armband was something we didn’t think of so we had to use yung pangtali ng buhok.”
No one knew anything about the Philippine team. In fact, during their first practice session that day, the Jordan team came to watch while atop of one of the skyboxes, another team was seen videotaping them (see, someone beat the New England Patriots to Spygate).
“That was a waste of time and tape for them,” chuckled Encarnacion. “Before the competition, we tried to picture in our mind what the competition would be like but nothing could prepare us for what was to come.”
Team Philippines was shellacked in their first match versus Thailand 8-1.
It wasn’t only the toughness of the Thais who are world-class competitors in the sport, but also the size of the playing court that was much larger than any venue where the team had practiced or played back in Manila. “We trained and played in basketball courts and in malls,” smiled Tanjangco of their first time to play in an international standard-sized court (38 feet x 28 feet).
And then there was the cold. It was freezing at the Thai-Jap Youth Center in Dindaeng, Bangkok that the players were wrapped in their thin-fake Nike jackets when on the bench.
Facing their first international experience, the team lost all its matches (2-6 to eventual champion Uzbekistan, and a pair of losses 0-11 and 3-6 to Jordan). Their compact formation eventually helped them as they played stingy defense that made it for their foes to score on them.
But even in defeat, they found plenty of consolation. After their first match where they held Thailand without a goal in the first 15 minutes, the referees informed the team that they had performed so much better than their male counterparts in the national team. After Jordan later lost in the tournament to another country, the coach told his wards that they should learn how to lose gracefully like the Philippines. Fran Ruffy’s parents accompanied the team to Thailand yet when their daughter scored against Uzbekistan, they were going up the steps to the spectator’s area when the barked announced, “Goal for the Philippines --- Ruffy!”
The biggest reward aside from the journey and the experience was hearing the national anthem played during the parade of nations. “Our hearts were just swelling with pride,” recounted Encarnacion. “It hits you differently in an international setting.”
Yet almost immediately after that, the team had another good laugh when they waited for their turn for the picture taking session only to realize that no one from the press was there to take their shots.
“The team was built with a good amount of humor,” explained Tiffany Batungbacal. “We were never put together the natural way because of that we are able to laugh at what we’ve gone through just to survive.”
On the way back to Manila with a briefcase full of memories and a mindset that they could do better the next time since they were now armed with some experience, the team competed in another Indoor Tournament before they went back to Thailand for the 2007 SEA Games.
Where are we going?
In the wake of the team’s resignation, they are making plans to still compete. They’re received offers of help, support and invitations to compete in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. They plan on conducting clinics nationwide. Charlie Cojuangco of the Negros Occidental Football Association has spoken to them about helping teach the game in Bacolod.
“It would be nice to represent country again but we’ve done our share and we can claim something that we accomplished without the help of the federation that provided nothing yet asked a lot of us,” summed up Tanjangco of everything that transpired over the last five years. “We’re just doing it under a different banner – for the love of the game and for us.”
On the wall is a medal tracker for the various sports where the country sends its national teams to do battle. It also serves as an unofficial grading system for the various national sports associations.
Some sports do well, but when it comes to Philippines football, you could say that we’ve flatlined.
The graph ironically isn’t updated. If it was as of this writing then it should have reflected the slight blip before the sport slipped back into its prolonged coma.
The blip belongs to the former RP Women’s Futsal Team that won the country’s first futsal medal in the 2007 South East Asian Games in Rakhon Ratchasima, Thailand.
That team resigned en masse three weeks ago to protest the lack of professionalism and poor government that has taken root in the Philippine Football Federation, the oldest football association in Asia. But that’s a horror story that I’ve previously told; this is a feel-good one.
What are we doing here?
It was the sixth phone call Ria Tanjangco received from her parents and she was still in the airport. It was her first trip out of the country without her family and everyone was kind of anxious. The team was competing in the 1st Asian Indoor Futsal Championships in Bangkok, Thailand.
The team was excitedly waiting to board their flight via Kuwait Airways at NAIA -- “Because it was the cheapest flight there” – and Tanjangco’s folks were calling. She could hear her brother in the background saying, “Sabihin mo wag na sila tumuloy -- tatambakan lang sila.” Ria’s mother shushed her football/futsal-playing son when she asked him if his team has won anything as well.
Another teammate, Glenda Bascon was initially disallowed by her mother to go because she didn’t believe that she was playing futsal.
The trip was also the first for many of the team. One even wondered aloud if there was a stopover in Kuwait. The team was ill equipped for the tournament.
They purchased their fake Nike jackets (that had reflectors and swirls on them as part of the design) at Divisoria for Php 300 each. The Philippine flag patches were purchased at the military supply stores outside Camp Crame where they got no discount despite being a National Team.
Everyone had to sew their patches onto their jackets. But not everyone knew how to stitch them on. One used safety pins while another used duct tape. One even had the flag inverted with the red side up. It’s a good thing the Thai authorities didn’t notice or else they would have thought that the Philippines had sent a war party to the tournament.
They arrived at Bangkok at 1am and had a full day ahead of them beginning with the coaches’ meeting at 8 o’clock.
To the embarrassment of coaches Manny Batungbacal and Paul Encarnacion, they arrived at the meeting in sports shirts, shorts, and sneakers. Everyone else wore suits or semi-formal attire. “The whole trip, the tournament was a learning experience for us,” said a sheepish Encarnacion. “No one told us what we needed to do and to bring. In fact, even the captain’s armband was something we didn’t think of so we had to use yung pangtali ng buhok.”
No one knew anything about the Philippine team. In fact, during their first practice session that day, the Jordan team came to watch while atop of one of the skyboxes, another team was seen videotaping them (see, someone beat the New England Patriots to Spygate).
“That was a waste of time and tape for them,” chuckled Encarnacion. “Before the competition, we tried to picture in our mind what the competition would be like but nothing could prepare us for what was to come.”
Team Philippines was shellacked in their first match versus Thailand 8-1.
It wasn’t only the toughness of the Thais who are world-class competitors in the sport, but also the size of the playing court that was much larger than any venue where the team had practiced or played back in Manila. “We trained and played in basketball courts and in malls,” smiled Tanjangco of their first time to play in an international standard-sized court (38 feet x 28 feet).
And then there was the cold. It was freezing at the Thai-Jap Youth Center in Dindaeng, Bangkok that the players were wrapped in their thin-fake Nike jackets when on the bench.
Facing their first international experience, the team lost all its matches (2-6 to eventual champion Uzbekistan, and a pair of losses 0-11 and 3-6 to Jordan). Their compact formation eventually helped them as they played stingy defense that made it for their foes to score on them.
But even in defeat, they found plenty of consolation. After their first match where they held Thailand without a goal in the first 15 minutes, the referees informed the team that they had performed so much better than their male counterparts in the national team. After Jordan later lost in the tournament to another country, the coach told his wards that they should learn how to lose gracefully like the Philippines. Fran Ruffy’s parents accompanied the team to Thailand yet when their daughter scored against Uzbekistan, they were going up the steps to the spectator’s area when the barked announced, “Goal for the Philippines --- Ruffy!”
The biggest reward aside from the journey and the experience was hearing the national anthem played during the parade of nations. “Our hearts were just swelling with pride,” recounted Encarnacion. “It hits you differently in an international setting.”
Yet almost immediately after that, the team had another good laugh when they waited for their turn for the picture taking session only to realize that no one from the press was there to take their shots.
“The team was built with a good amount of humor,” explained Tiffany Batungbacal. “We were never put together the natural way because of that we are able to laugh at what we’ve gone through just to survive.”
On the way back to Manila with a briefcase full of memories and a mindset that they could do better the next time since they were now armed with some experience, the team competed in another Indoor Tournament before they went back to Thailand for the 2007 SEA Games.
Where are we going?
In the wake of the team’s resignation, they are making plans to still compete. They’re received offers of help, support and invitations to compete in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. They plan on conducting clinics nationwide. Charlie Cojuangco of the Negros Occidental Football Association has spoken to them about helping teach the game in Bacolod.
“It would be nice to represent country again but we’ve done our share and we can claim something that we accomplished without the help of the federation that provided nothing yet asked a lot of us,” summed up Tanjangco of everything that transpired over the last five years. “We’re just doing it under a different banner – for the love of the game and for us.”
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