Cebu Dancesport Open ready

CEBU CITY — Two weeks ago, this writer discussed the readiness of Cebu provlnce to host major events of the Southeast Asian Games. But the gathering of the region’s best athletes has also opened the door for Cebu to host another international sporting event.

Team Cebu City Dancesport, which is organizing the first-ever SEA Games dancesport competition as part of the Dancesport Council of the Philippines (DSCP), is putting up the first Cebu Open International Dancesport championship at the Waterfront Hotel in Lahug, site of the SEA Games dancesport competition.

"This was a rare opportunity for us," explains Edward Hayco, who helped found Cebu’s dancesport group. "We felt that, since all of the adjudicators and most of the competitors were already here, it would be easy to get them to stay another day for a Cebu Open."

Four years ago, Edward and Eleanor Hayco had to learn social dancing for a civic group they were part of. They fell in love with it, and realized there was more to it than entertaining lonely matrons. They set up Team Cebu City Dancesport, and soon got the backing of the city government. In the succeeding months, they spread throughout the province, finding and training dance athletes as young as five years old. In each of the December and March national ranking tournaments, Cebu won an astonishing 17 of 23 golds, making the dance community sit up and take notice.

Team Cebu City Dancesport printed over 5,000 flyers for the Cebu Open. Philippine dance athletes distributed them to fellow competitors in events in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The response was a flood of enthusiastic positives.

"We got entries from as far away as Russia, the US and France. Even we never thought we would get entries from that far away," reveals Eleanor Hayco, who is a competitor herself.

Cebu booked 120 rooms at the Waterfront. As of now, 75 have already been booked, mostly by local entries. The SEA Games pulled in the majority of the entries, and they will be staying for the Cebu Open.

"All major tourism events are sporting events," elaborates Patrick Gregorio, who was concurrently head of the Waterfront group and thd Cebu Visitors and Conventions Bureau when the Cebu Open was being planned. "The Cebu Open would bring in families from all over. That’s tourism."

As the entries pour in, Cebu’s growing dancesport program is poised to use the SEA Games as a launch pad for what they hope will become a traditional showcase for Philippine excellence and hospitality.

"In the long run, our advantage is that we start our dancers young," Edward Hayco reveals. "They start them off as adults. Ours begin as children."

And our baby steps become giant leaps sooner than expected.