Covering sports events

I’VE had my years of covering sports events up to the “Palarong Pambansa”. How I wish the younger crop of Baguio journalists would have the drive and passion to do so in their prime. Not as an excuse to see places, but an opportunity to witness and capture the thrill and drama of competition. Not an arm-chair coverage that depends on the results brought to the billeting quarters at the end of the day by coaches and athletes themselves. Not veiled plagiarism by way of rewriting and converting the dispatches of a fellow journalist who did the actual coverage and then passing these as one’s own. It’s honestly and actually getting the results from the field, which makes coverage a genuine labor of love.

It’s not all about winning and losing. Coverage goes beyond the daily medal count of gold, silver and bronze. It has something to do with recording honesty and fair play that are the marks of a Baguio and Cordillera boy and girl in and out of the playing field.

The year skips me now, but my memory goes back to the final of the 100-meter dash for high school girls at the Benguet State University grounds in one regional competition. It resulted in a photo finish, with the judges declaring winner the runner from Benguet. Baguio lodged a protest.

At the victory stand, the Benguet lass suddenly handed her gold medal to her Baguio rival and slid the silver around her neck. It was a gesture Dr. Fernando Bautista, Sr., the venerable sports booster and founder of the University of Baguio, wouldn’t let pass. He handed the girl a cash award, gripping her hand in a firm handshake. He was as proud as any father would be over the winning feat of a daughter in or out of the race track.

A few years later, while conducting a journalism training in Dalupirip, Itogon, Benguet, I was told the honest girl had married and was living