Dissecting the Olympic Debacle (part 2)

Foreign Investment

While many grumble about recruiting Fil-Foreigners to the national team, I most welcome this move. After all, they are Fiilipinos too and they have every right to compete for national team slots. Hopefully though, these FIl-Foreigners are not given free passes to join the team. Let them try out and just give them slots because they were trained somewhere else. Furthermore, if we are going to recruit Fil-Foreigners, let's make sure we recruit the best ones, ones who can win, or young enough to improve and win. Please, no more supposed saviors like Athletics' David Bunevacz or Tennis' Eric Taino. Why didn't we get Swimming's Coughlin, who is now a two-time Olympic gold medallist or BMX Cycling's U.S. National Champion Caluag, who desperately wanted to represent us but was ignored by the cycling NSA? Recruiting Fil-Foreign players will help us, as long as we get the right ones. If we can't train the right ones, then let's go homegrown for that particular sport.

Learning from Jedi Masters

Almost all sports officials try to look learned by exclaiming we always need "grassroots development program" to boost sports development in our country. The problem is, nobody is really creating a proper grassroots program for any sport. Most "grassroots programs" here are nothing more than kids playing and enjoying the sport. Nothing wrong with that, but the program should be designed with a particular goal and time frame, if we want to develop future world champions. The problem is, most of our coaches, especially in these youth programs are former players or relatives with no coaching experience or training. No offense to these people as they are mostly volunteers, but how are they expected to imbibe the proper fundamentals if they don't know them themselves? What we need are elite coaches for oth the national AND grassroots programs, or better yet, we should pay the elite national coaches enough to handle both programs. This will ensure continuity between the two programs. At this time, though, most of our sports are in need of elite coaches, and admittedly most sports would need foreign coaches. Our national coaches are mostly great people (and I have met a lot of them), but we all need additional knowledge from them. Hiring all these coaches would require tons of money, but it is the proper step to the right direction. Also, that's why it's key to pick very few priority sports.

Pruning the Weeds

It's a common refrain to ask officials to step down whenever we lose, and I have to say, there is some prudence in that call. Unfortunately, many of these sports officials don't actually leave or find a roundabout way to come back. Sports officials are not politicians. Their roles include promoting the popularity and development of the sport. They are given funds and they have to manage these between international tournaments for the national team and different tournaments for the promotion of the sport in the country. This is not a job for people who don't play the sport. This is not a job for people who can barely play. This is not a job for politicians. We should have officials who have been working for the NSA for several years, beginning with the dirty work like arranging events, looking for private sponsors and the like. This way, they can learn the job first ad become the NSA Head when they are good ready. We should have officials who play and enjoy the sport, so they have a better idea on how to promote it. Lastly, we should have officials who go around the the happenings of the sport so they can truly understand the athletes and the sentiments of all participants. Sports officials should be people completely immersed in the sport, like the eer humble and passionate William Ramirez, not politicians who lose their congressional bids or brown nosers who cling to positions like barnacles.

There you have it. They are simple solutions but seemingly out of our sports officials' collective brains. Hopefully, sports politicians, especially those currently on the upper echlons of our sporting world, will soon find themselves jobless, and that will get the ball rolling. In this way, it won't hurt so bad to root for our national team.