Cesafi to fight Manila malpractice

Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi) commissioner Felix Tiukinhoy reacted strongly to what I raised in my previous column--about how a player was being forced to repeat a grade level to maximize his player years--because it’s a practice he wants stopped.

That has happened to several basketball players from Cebu who were recruited in Manila leagues that has an age limit of 20 in the high school division, giving an opening for greedy coaches who want their good players in high school until they reach 20.

One Cesafi coach tried that practice and was suspended for a season for his efforts.

“Unfair na sa mga bata,” Tiukinhoy said when we met at the sidelines of the Cesafi football finals last Sunday.

And since this is being practiced by Manila leagues, Tiukinhoy wants Cesafi to lead the fight against this and he’s planning to solicit the help of the Department of Education via a position paper.

I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that making a student repeat a year level purely for sports isn’t right. A high school student athlete’s ultimate goal is an athletic scholarship in college, not to stay in high school until he or she maximizes his or her playing years.

Tiukinhoy hopes that Cesafi’s position paper, which will be sent to DepEd plus a few political figures, will initiate some changes next season.

I also suggested that aside from that, Cesafi should also encourage for recruitment of players to be done school to school and not directly with the athlete or the athlete’s parents because that’s where the shenanigans happen.

Sometimes, some parents demand more from a recruiter just to get their kids’ commitment and that can be avoided if the recruitment process is more transparent and more structured.

Take the case of the University of Sto. Tomas (UST) football team, whose coach recruited the Don Bosco Technological Center football players. Aside from visiting the team and talking with the parents, he also assured them that their kids’ academic needs would be taken care of.

The recruitment was smooth and the result so perfect that when the UST coach visited Cebu a few weeks back, he was looking forward to next year’s batch.

That’s not the case for some of the Cebuanos who were recruited individually as I learned a few of them are having trouble and are planning to come back to Cebu.

He (Zverev) apologized to me at the net. I was like, ‘Buddy, shut up. You don’t need to apologize to me here. Congratulations on a great match and a great tournament so far. All the best for the finals. And you move on. ROGER FEDERER