Sports return a beacon of hope
After two years of inactivity because of the global pandemic, sports is finally back, giving a huge impact on the lives of people from all walks of life.
First and foremost, the long lull in the athletic arena made everyone realize how important sports is in our everyday living.
“Two years of the pandemic has really been something. A big learning for everyone, particularly for sports,” said Cebu City Sports Commission (CCSC) chairman John Pages. “We have missed sports so much and the pandemic has taught us how important sports is in our society.”
Now that things are getting back to normal, Pages believes that the best way to move forward is to keep our hands busy and be active again.
“I think the excitement level of everyone is so high,” Pages furthered. “So we request all organizers of different sports to really just go out and organize events. I think we’ll see a surge of people, maybe even those not into exercising and sports before will really be taking up sports right now because they see how important it is in our lives.”
Strength and conditioning coach Roger Justine Potot of ARQ Sports shared the same sentiments.
“The return of sports should give us more opportunities to be more active and exercise more with the different leagues and sporting events that are now present almost everywhere,” said Potot.
“Also, sportsmen like coaches, players, officials have more job opportunities, which will allow them to have better income,” he added.
What Pages and Potot have shared is actually the main motivation of sportsman Christian Paroan in spearheading the first actual run in the province since the outbreak of the pandemic last April.
“The situation is now getting back to normal and one effective way to encourage people to go out is to organize events,” said Paroan. “We actually had two purpose in staging our Recovery Run three months ago, to run for our health and for the economy of Cebu. Business has not been good the past years. Like everyone else, we have been badly hit by the pandemic plus the devastation of typhoon Odette. It’s high time for us to recover and it was our own little way of pushing for the economic recovery of our province.”
Time and again, sports offers a key role to inspire and gives significant benefits in all facets of our lives. It has shown that it can and has been a beacon for optimism and hope especially during these challenging times, providing us a crucial path in moving on with resiliency in the face of adversity.