by rick olivares
The Metro Manila Tiong
Lian Basketball Association will skip its 44th season this coming
January as the six schools – Chiang Kai Shek College, Grace Christian High
School, Hope Christian High School, St. Jude Catholic School, St. Stephen’s
High School, and Xavier School – will sit down before the current school year
ends to discuss once and for all the rules pertaining to eligibility,
recruitment, and the homegrown issues among many others that have plagued them
in the past years.
After taking the 2013
title with a three-game finals win over Xavier, Hope Christian came under fire
from some schools for their recruitment policies that they said undermined the
spirit of competition. According to a source from Xavier, HCHS and Chiang Kai
Shek College began to recruit a lot of Filipinos instead of the usual home
grown Fil-Chinese players.
Hope Christian won the
title with Filipino standouts John Apacible, Jobert Mercado, and Arjan dela
Cruz.
Earlier reports had it
that Grace Christian, St. Jude, and Xavier were considering pulling out from
the Philippines’ oldest Chinese-Filipino basketball league due to those
aforementioned issues.
A Tiong Lian source
clarified that “the league isn’t dead nor is it cancelled but will merely take
a year’s sabbatical to iron out all the issues that have plagued the league.”
“In truth,” added our
Tiong Lian source, “If you look at our league rules, there is so much gray area
on recruitment and what is a home grown player.”
The previous Tiong Lian
rules stated that as long as someone is legitimately enrolled then he can play.
These rules made no distinction on who is Chinese, Filipino, homegrown or a
transferee until some schools decided to cut down and curb recruitment in
recent years.
The current Tiong Lian
rules stipulate that a homegrown player is considered to be 12 years of age
while a school can recruit at least two players.
However, before the 42nd
season, the group headed by Xavier wanted to bring down the age of the homegrown
player to 10 years of age and to further cut down on the number of recruits
every year from three to two to one and to ultimately, none by Season 46.
The other Tiong Lian
schools (HCHS, CKSC, and St. Stephen’s) however disagreed because it is
difficult to recruit players due to different school policies and their student
population number.
Our league source claims
that, “The correct thing to do is to look at the culture of all the schools.
Some schools have a student population of several thousand while others are
under a thousand. Some schools accept a lot of transferees and as per league
rules, they are considered as recruits. However, these schools disagree on
transferees being labeled as recruits since some of them come to their school
voluntarily.
What all six Tiong Lian
schools agree to however is the suggestion that the league take the year off to
iron out all issues then come back in 2015 for its 44th season.
Summed up our league
source, “We want to settle all issues first then come up with a comprehensive
set of rules to build on Tiong Lian’s legacy.”
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