Wishes for 2025

2024 was an eventful year for Philippines sports highlighted by the performance of our athletes at the Paris Olympics, complete with a nasty clan battle as a sideshow.

Except for a few, most of our athletes did not medal in Paris but prior to and after the Games, they showed that this nation of 7,600+ islands have athletes who can compete with the best of the world.  Never mind the contagion of politics in the national sporting agencies.

Not only individual events but team sports also did good thanks to the support (or the lack thereof) of the NSAs.  We hope that the year ahead will have more sporting breakthroughs, without the accompanying dramas.

Here’s our wishes for the year to come:

That our sporting agencies and national athletes as well as our stakeholders will have abundant funding comparable to the confidential funds of the OVP, the DepEd and the PDAF.

That stakeholders and benefactors will widen their support to young and developing athletes and search for talents in unfamiliar and way out of the ordinary locations much like China’s territorial expansion.

Granting that both of the above wishes will come to fruition, that our athletes will snatch medals in international competitions like the wanton snatching of medals at last week’s CCM.  (did some of those guys who grabbed medals actually finish the run or even participated at all?)

May our athletes be congested with blessings like the congestion at Mandaue and SRP traffic and may they wade in delight like in the floods at Colon and AS Fortuna.

That aspiring basketball players may have the chance to get into the professional leagues ‘kahit 5 minuto lang’ like the travesty of Mr. Long Bomb.

May there be unity within the different national sporting agencies and dismiss all ill-feelings like the dismissal of ill-gotten wealth cases against you-know-who and their disciples.

May the heads of these NSAs have doable ideas for their respective associations unlike Donald Trump’s wild idea of buying Greenland and annexing Canada as the 51st state.

Here’s to a more exciting sporting year.