B-League gets going

Volleyball has its V-League, basketball a D-League, Australasian football an A-League and Japanese women’s bowling a P-League. Now, there’s a new Filipino league ready to break into mainstream sports. It’s called the B-League, short for the National Collegiate Billiards League set to open at Ocean Park on Nov. 20.  

B-League president Reli de Leon, 53, is a familiar figure in local sports. In the early 1990s, he ventured into managing PBA players as an agent with co-pioneer Danny Espiritu and some of his clients were Eugene Quilban, Dondon Ampalayo, Andy de Guzman and the Lago brothers. De Leon also caddied for Robert Jaworski to whom he has remained fiercely loyal up to today.

It was De Leon who organized the Manila visit of NBA star Kevin Johnson for Converse, the Adidas under-16 football league, the Kalikasan bikefest, the Avia marathon, the Accel three-point shootout, the Converse Battle of the Bands and the Allan Caidic shooting camp. He’s also known for landing major endorsement contracts for Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales.

De Leon, a Mapua industrial engineering graduate who has found a calling as a marketing specialist, thought of forming the B-League to breed a new generation of billiards players from the school system.

“We want to uplift the image of billiards as a sport,” said De Leon. “We’ve invited schools to participate in the B-League. We want to bring kids, who are good in billiards but are out of school, back to the classroom as athletic scholars. We want to keep the sport alive beyond the stars of today and we want to develop new heroes who are educated and able to represent our country as spokesmen.”

De Leon’s associate Perry Mariano, founder of the Billiards Managers and Players Association of the Philippines, said it’s time to think of the future. Mariano, 59, manages several cue artists including Dennis Orcullo, Ronnie Alcano, Robert Gomez and Carlo Viado.

“Efren (Reyes) and Django (Bustamante) won’t play forever and after their generation comes Orcullo who’s 31 and Viado who’s 26 then there’s nobody coming up,” said Mariano, a La Salle ‘72 graduate. “Look at the other countries. Their rising stars are in their teens. In two or three years, the new generation of stars will be pushing out the veterans. Government has no development

program for billiards and we need to develop a new breed of stars to keep our dominance in the sport – if not, we’ll lose our competitive edge.”

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De Leon and Mariano hatched the idea of a B-League where schools put up teams of five, without gender distinction, to play a double round elimination in the juniors (18-below) and seniors (23-below) divisions. Each tie involves three matches – 8-ball doubles, 9-ball singles and 10-ball singles with a player allowed to compete in only one event. Each match is a best-of-five affair. After the eliminations, the top four advance to play in the knockout semifinals where No. 1 faces No. 4 and No. 2 takes on No. 3. Winners move on to dispute the crown.

A season will last up to four months. De Leon said the opening and closing will be televised and each tie in the eliminations and playoffs will be available for viewing on live internet streaming.

The B-League’s regular home will be the Star Billiards Center on Araneta Avenue. The facility has over 40 tables and is in a safe, private compound. The Center owner is sports patron Sebastian Chua, head of the Billiards and Snooker Congress of the Philippines. Chua is the Philippine distributor of Predator cue sticks, Brunswick billiards tables and Mongol pencils.

 “Most of the matches will be played at Star,” said De Leon. “But we’re also negotiating to hold some ties at SM City North EDSA and other malls. There is no registration fee to join the B-League. We will provide uniforms for all the players and shuttle service from schools to the Star Center. This is a purely amateur league and we’re not affiliated with any organization. We want to be independent so we can chart our own course.”

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De Leon said he expects as many as 18 schools to enlist. So far, confirmed to participate are La Salle, Ateneo, Mapua, St. Benilde, UE, UST, Fatima, St. Clare, UM, New Era, JRU, CEU, Don Bosco Mandaluyong, Lourdes School (juniors only), San Sebastian and Lyceum. Letters of invitation were also sent to FEU, San Beda, NU, Adamson, UP and Letran.

“The schools are enthusiastic,” said De Leon. “Billiards is a sport in which Filipinos have proved to excel. We want to erase the notion that it’s a ‘kanto boy’ sport by bringing in the school system to discover new talent. The feedback is very encouraging. Nokia has agreed to be the B-League presentor.”

De Leon said two months after the end of the B-League season, Manila will host the first-ever Asian Collegiate B-League with Thailand, Chinese-Taipei, Singapore and the Philippines sure to participate. China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam may also join.

“We’ll still decide if the B-League champion automatically represents the country in the Asian competition or a selection of the best players,” said De Leon. “There’s no hurry to decide that. We’ll focus on the B-League for now, playing out the season, choosing the MVP and creating billiards heroes to take over from Efren, Django, Dennis and the others in the future.”