Calabarzon gains in storm-hit Palaro

NAGA CITY — Heavy rains and strong winds spawned by Typhoon Caloy forced the cancellation of some events in the Palarong Pambansa and plunged the whole of Naga into darkness but all this failed to stop Calabarzon from surging ahead of fancied National Capital Region in the race for the overall crown in the secondary division.

Archer Janet Bermas and trackster Richard Maulion helped power Calabarzon to victories in their respective teams events as it pooled a total of 103 points under the Palaro points system to storm past erstwhile frontrunner and defending champion NCR heading into the final day of competitions at the Metro Naga Sports Complex here.

NCR, which showed the way both in the elementary and secondary levels Thursday, slipped to second with 102.5 points despite the victory of tanker Jasmine Al-Khaldi, who emerged as the event’s best performer with six golds.

NCR, however, was way ahead in the elementary level with 97 points and was followed by Western Visayas, Calabarzon and Central Luzon with 52, 34.5, 34.5 and 29.5 points, respectively.

Buoyed up by her five-gold splurge in the first three days, Al-Khaldi swam her way to another gold in the 50-meter freestyle in 29.17 seconds to hike her total to six gold medals, the most by anyone in this annual multi-sports event.

Meanwhile, Bermas, after snaring her fourth gold medal in the Olympic round Wednesday, teamed up with Samantha Mercado and Lourdes Bellonas in beating host Bicol, 219-211, for the archery team gold that hiked her total to five.

Bermas, a 14-year-old incoming senior at Makiling National High School in Calamba, Laguna, emerged as the first quadruple gold medal winner with wins in the 50-m, 30-m, standard and Olympic round Wednesday.

"I had a hard time in this last event because of the bad weather condition," said Bermas in Filipino. "But I didn’t allow myself to be distracted by it and just focused myself on winning."

Maulion, who earlier topped elementary long and triple jump and 110-m hurdles, for his part, spearheaded the 4x100-m relay team to victory in 47.8 to emerge athletics’ winningest athlete with four golden efforts.

Some events were either cancelled outright or shortened due to the unplayable venue conditions caused by heavy rains and strong winds brought up by the tropical depression Caloy who struck parts of Bicol, including this premier city.

Pole vault was cancelled while winners in swimming, some relay races and lawn tennis were selected based on their performances before in the preliminaries.

Ballgames like baseball, softball and football are also endangered from being scrapped while basketball and volleyball were transferred from the open courts of Pacol to the covered gym of Ateneo de Naga.

Trees were uprooted, fences fell and electricity was cut the whole of Naga City that caused delays in the transmission of results.

It was the first time in years that a typhoon as strong as this one hit the Palaro.

"This is really rare, we’re used to hot weather during the Palaro," said Adela Brazal, who chairs the Palaro results, record and documentation committee.

Al-Khaldi, in fact, could have broken more records and captured more gold medals if not for the typhoon.

The Fil-Arab, who is a seventh grader at International Christian Academy in Paranaque, saw a potential seventh gold medal slip away after finishing just third in the heats in 2:41.80 to settle for the bronze.

Meanwhile, some parents of NCR’s elementary baseball team asked Department of Education OIC Fe Hidalgo to look into alleged age-cheating violations.

They alleged there are two batters from Eastern Visayas who were over the age requirement.