Belmonte launches Champs for Joy

MANILA, Philippines - Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte has launched the city’s first formal competitive training program for swimming dubbed “Champs for Joy” in cooperation with the Philippine Swimming League and Diliman Preparatory School in a follow-up to her learn-to-swim program last summer.

From the 500 beginners who completed the learn-to-swim course last summer at the DPS Swimming Center, PSL president Susan Papa, overall coordinator of the project, said 60 have made it to the next stage where they will be given advanced training to prepare them for club and national competitions.

Former Sen. Nikki Coseteng, DPS president and chief executive officer, had offered the use of the DPS Swimming Center for the learn-to-swim course whose objective is to teach beginners the basics that will help them save themselves and others in distress in times of calamities like floods.

The Champs for Joy program will train another batch of 500 swimmers in summer. The top 60 from the batch will again be tapped for advanced training in line with Vice Mayor Belmonte’s continuing swimming program for Quezon City.

The Champs for Joy, a brainchild of the vice mayor, is in line with the city’s overall program of promoting a healthy lifestyle for all QC residents.

Coseteng said Quezon City is the first local government (LGU) to launch a swimming program at the DPS Swimming Center.