Higher goal set for City Olympics
Over 15,000 student-athletes from different schools will once again showcase their athletic prowess in the 28th Cebu City Olympics, which will formally kick off tomorrow at the Cebu City Sports Center.
Department of Education (DepEd)-Cebu City Schools Division Superintendent Bianito A. Dagatan said they will be tracking the individual and team performance of the athletes to determine if there are any concerning developments.
“We all have our targets, each unit and the tournament manager’s goal is to win gold," said Dagatan in a press conference yesterday. "But that is not our target at the division level. We have to look into the performance of the team or the athlete because we want to make sure that we are in the right track and if not we need to double our time to have positive developments.”
Dagatan added that instructed all tournament managers to make a report if the top athletes are performing better than last year's winners.
“After the competition, we will study the standing or performance of each winning individual athletes and teams if it is comparable or better than last year so we can be sure that we will have a more competitive delegation in the regional athletic meet,” said Dagatan.
The City Olympics is the selection process for the city’s representatives to Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association (CVIRAA) Meet.
One of the changes made this year is the privilege given to the athletes who are members of the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation, Inc. (CESAFI) schools to play directly in the City Olympics instead of joining the unit meet.
“This will give the athletes from the public schools the opportunity to step up their performance," said Dagatan.
DepEd-Cebu City Division Sports Technical Committee head Francis Ramirez, for his part, said the move will give the public school athletes bigger chances of participation in the sporting meet.
“We replicate this change in the elementary division like how we did in the secondary in the previous years. This will give our student athletes from the public schools the chance to join in the City Olympics and with this, we expect nga managhan atong mga players from the public schools,” said Ramirez.
A total of 26 events are featured in this year’s competition. These are archery, arnis, athletics, badminton, billiard, boxing, football, scrabble, sepak takraw, swimming, baseball, softball, basketball, chess, cultural events, gymnastics, karatedo, taekwondo, wrestling, wushu, pencak silat, dancesport, futsal, tennis, table tennis and volleyball.