Cheering up

Joe Guerrero is not your ordinary sports fan. Even if he can’t participate in a sport himself, he will find a way to get involved. A cheerleader when he was in De La Salle University, he has an almost fanatical passion for basketball and a few other sports. A practicing arm wrestler, the stocky computer genius is the one who put together the websites for most of our popular basketball personalities, from Danny Seigle to former Star columnist Jannelle So.

"It was something I always wanted to do," Guerrero told The Star. "I feel that with the technology today, these basketball players can cross over into other markets, increase awareness, and really become part of the consciousness."

Guerrero knows what he speaks of. His company, Awava Manila, occupies an entire floor of a building along Annapolis Street in affluent Greenhills. He has also been responsible for building the considerable online community for Pulp magazine.

"It’s really a means of bringing people with the same interests together," he explains. "If you keep them active long enough, pretty soon, word of mouth will give you a pretty big community, then you can entice advertisers to support you." Guerrero gives a ballpark figure of roughly 8,000 active members as a yardstick to get sponsors to weigh in.

But Guerrero’s basic enthusiasm lies in cheerleading, which anybody can do. The past four years, cheerleading has become a mainstream event, with popular consumer brands attaching their brands to competitions from the high school to the college level. The last three years in particular have seen the cheering teams of the University of the Philippines and University of Santo Tomas build a strong rivalry in the UAAP from the sidelines. In fact, members from the cheering squads of both schools formed the bulk of the group flown to Seoul, Korea by the Philippine Sports Commission to provide support for our athletes in the last Asian Games.

That’s the reason why Guerrero is organizing the first Annual Cheerleading Camp. It will feature cheerleaders from the National Basketball Association conducting trainings based on the curricula of standard cheerleading camps in the US.

"We really want to professionalize the industry," Guerrero says. "Since there is a great deal of interest in it, we foresee this to propel the event to the next level." Guerrero explains how, in the United States, cheerleading has become a sport unto itself. In fact, in major national competitions, competitions range from a handful of participants per team to full forty-man line-ups.

Guerrero is bringing in Jason Bass and Giselle Fabricante as camp directors. Bass gained renown when, while cheering for Rutgers University, he became part of the World Cup Open team, Wild Stars, which was crowned national champion. Bass was recruited by the NBA and has added entertainment value to the league’s events in Milan, Tokyo, Mexico City, Paris and Barcelona. He is currently in his third season with the New Jersey Nets.

Fabricante, meanwhile, has cheered at both the college and professional levels in the US. She was voted Rookie of the Year in her first year with Rutgers, and team captain her last. She has also coached at New Jersey Cheer Academy and is a part of NBA Entertainment, where she manages, choreographs, and even performs with the NBA Fan Patrol, an interactive cheer/dance group that entertains at many of the league’s national and international events.

Guerrero himself has been a pioneer cheerleader in the Philippines, and has the distinction of being the first one-on-one partner lift during a UAAP game. He will serve a lead trainor during the camp, which will feature over a dozen of the most experienced cheerleaders in the country.

Guerrero’s gang will conduct the first Annual Cheerleading Camp at the adidas Sports Kamp and the SM Megamall from April 17 to 23. Interested parties may call Awava Manila at 726-9606.

A preview of their training will be on next week’s episode of The Basketball Show, which is aired over IBC-13 every Saturday at 4 p.m.