Palarong Pambansa under way

DAPITAN CITY, Philippines - Perennial champion NCR and contender Western Visayas are all geared up for the hostilities even while the organizers rushed to make the main venue 100 percent ready in time for today’s opening of the 2011 Palarong Pambansa here.

The Big City has sent a full complement of about 1,000 delegates (athletes, coaches, officials, parents and chaperons) for the Dapitan joust, a sixth consecutive overall championship in the 17-sport competition for elementary and high school students on their crosshairs.

“Gusto namin NCR is always the champion, prove to them that we’re the unbeatable region,” said Henry Labaguez, coach of the capital’s elementary girls’ athletics team.

Last year, the NCR entries swept the elementary and high school competitions en route to the general championship (643 points) with the Western Visayans settling for runner-up honors (432.67).

“We expect to perform better this year and we prepared harder,” said Region VI regional director Mildred Garay of the 1,000-strong delegation expected to do well in track and field and the ballgames. “We’re not really saying we’ll be number one this time but we’ll outperform our records last year.”

The games will commence with a parade of teams at 2 p.m. and a formal program at 5 p.m. with Vice President Jejomar Binay to deliver the keynote speech.

But a day before the opening, organizing committe chairman Romero Jaloslos admitted that there were still work to be done to make the Jose Rizal Memorial State University Sports Complex fully ready for the games.

“We’re 99 percent ready and we still have 1 percent to finish,” Jalosjos said yesterday noon as construction personnel rushed to apply paints at the oval, swimming, indoor court and the facade of the JRMSTU complex and fixing the grass of the field.

“Four days of rains have delayed our preparations, hopefully it won’t rain overnight so we can do the finishing touches. I’ve instructed our people not to sleep so they can work on these little last items and finish up by dawn. We’re nervously confident we can do it,” he added.

The rest of the requirements for hosting the May 8-14 events, especially security and medical matters, have been long taken care of, the former Zamboanga de Norte congressman said.

The PNP has deployed 300 policemen all over the venues, billeting areas, and entry points to Dapitan with at least 300 more on-call and the Army waiting on the side.All state, city and provincial hospitals have committed to the event expected to draw 10,000 delegates with ambulances and teams of doctors and nurses fielded in key points.