Juico: Reformat Palaro, re-direct youth sports

MANILA, Philippines - Former Philippine Sports Commission chairman Philip Ella Juico said at the opening of the Philta-Toby’s Juniors Age-Group Tennis Challenge held recently at the Rizal Memorial Tennis Complex that children and youth sports must be influenced by ?the principle that sports for children and youth are organized so that they can play as much as they can the sport of their choice.

Juico, former Secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform in the administration of the late former President Corazon Aquino, said that youth and children’s sports should essentially be fun, free from unnecessary and excessive stress and pressure put up by adult organizers of said tournaments.

Delivering the welcome remarks in the 11th edition of the yearly tennis festival co-sponsored by PLDT-Smart Foundation, Juico said that in taking up sports, children and youth should learn skills and imbibe values that they can use and practice for the rest of their lives.

Echoing a similar theme in a recent interview with Investigative Documentaries, which will be aired on GMA News TV Channel 11, on Thursday at 8 p.m., Juico called on the country’s sports and education authorities to consider re-formatting and re-directing the youth’s Pambansang Palaro so that the annual student games can help promote the objectives of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Task Force on sports.

It called on all nations to use sports in its broader context in promoting health, education, peace, social development, rather than for just discovering society’s next sports heroes.

In the same interview, Juico stressed that had the Philippine Institute of Sports (Philsports), which he established during his term as PSC chairman in 1996, some 16 years ago, had been seriously pursued by his successors, the Philippines would probably have by now a strong nationwide coaching pool for elite sports.

Juico added that the Philsports would have produced the necessary academic experts and the education leaders needed to improve the physical education program of the country, and to establish and develop sports schools and to provide officers, managers, staff, and planners of the proposed Department of Sports.

The former dean of the DLSU Graduate School of Business also said that it would be almost impossible to have a viable Department of Sports and vibrant sports schools without experts coming out of training centers for sports and physical education like the Philsports.