By Annabel Consuelo Petinglay/PNA
SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique – Antique province’s athletes who will compete in the Western Visayas Regional Athletic Association (WVRAA) meet in Roxas City, Capiz on February 17 to 23 are expected to shine in individual sports.
Department of Education (DepEd) – Antique Division Sports Coordinator, Oliver Servillon, said in an interview Thursday that athletes who will compete in such individual sports as billiard, badminton, taekwondo, swimming, arnis, dance sports, and aero gymnastics, had more time to prepare well because of their coaches’ availability.
“Most of the athletes in individual sports were able to enroll in private gyms where there are instructors devoted to their rigid training year round,” he said.
For such team sports as baseball and basketball, the athletes rely on their teachers as their coaches, which is why they could not really practice regularly because they are also burdened with their teaching loads.
Servillon added that some 463 athletes will compete in the different sports events at the WVRAA.
He said that last year, the athletes from Antique garnered six gold medals and 36 silver medals in billiards, dance sports, badminton, and swimming.
“We have high hopes for our athletes to bring home more medals,” he said, adding that the provincial government of Antique is giving them budgetary support of more than PHP13 million for the WVRAA.
“Our budget is now okay,” he said.
Servillon said he started processing the purchase requests for the needs of the athletes, such as their uniforms, shoes and allowances.
The athletes, who will travel on board air-conditioned buses to Roxas City on February 10, will be accompanied by their technical officials and working committee members from the DepEd.
