Culture of mediocrity

There is a well-known sports adage that goes like this: "No one remembers who got second place." Another way of stating it is: "The first loser is the second placer." We offer these quotes as a reminder to our sports officials who gloat over the fact that we won 66 silver medals or 66 "near gold medals" as they would now re-define the categories of awards in athletic competition. Thus a bronze medal, in their hierarchy of values, is a "near silver." Isn’t this exercise a mere ploy to to justify the failure of our sports officials who predicted a gold medal haul of 40 and come home short of the count? For how can we justify the fact that we keep losing out to Vietnam whose participation in the SEA Games is less than a decade old?

If it is indeed true that our brave, tough and fighting President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had expressed satisfaction over the number of silver and bronze medals that we have won in the recently-concluded SEA Games, then there is reason to believe that she had sent the wrong message to our youth and sports officials.

It would have been more appropriate for her to remind our officials that, considering the fact that the Philippines has the longest history in sports among all participating countries in Southeast Asia, we should have learned valuable lessons from our past mistakes and almost 100 years of sports participation starting with the American Thomasites.

A cursory analysis of the reasons why we did not perform well in the last SEA Games will reveal the same causes of failure as those which we allowed to take place in the past. Unless there is a change in attitude among our sports officials — an attitude which will make them ashamed of failure rather than redefining it to give it the illusion of success — we will continue to promote a culture of mediocrity in the discipline of sports where the constant quest for excellence is the acceptable norm of behavior.

Aparicio H. Mequi
President
Philippine Association of Physical Educators Inc.