WHEN Iboy Pinga, a trustee of Southridge, a small all-boys private school along the grassy edge of Alabang, heard about some of the problems the various national football squads were facing right before the SEA Games, he immediately got on the phone.
Speaking with Mariano "Nonong" Araneta, president of the Philippine Football Federation (PFF), he offered this pitch.
Early this year, the school had opened its newly renovated football field, a multi-year effort of ripping up the old dirt and grass to replace it with sleek, artificial turf. What if the school would open up this venue to SEA Games football squads who needed it?
Araneta was quick to say yes. The offer came at exactly the right time. “Southridge has offered their artificial turf for a practice venue, Ceres [Liner] has loaned us buses… There are well-meaning individuals and companies that want the SEA Games to succeed,” he said in a phone interview with SPIN Life.
He added that the quality of the artificial pitch you’d find in Southridge is similar to what you'd see in the official competition arenas.
The Southridge pitch was constructed by Specicon Inc., the local partner of synthetic field manufacturer ActGlobal. Three layers of gravel and sand are topped with a layer of turf imported from the Netherlands. The “grass” (actually strands of monofilament yarn) is held up by a “soil” of rubber granules and an infill of sand, giving its turf’s characteristic glide.
Synthetic grass pitches around the area include the fields at International School, British School Manila, Turf BGC, Sparta in Mandaluyong, the FIFA-certified pitch at UP Diliman, and, of course, the Rizal Memorial Stadium and Biñan Football Stadium, where the SEA Games matches will be held.
This field, which opened on January 2019, is a far cry from the school’s old grass pitch. “It was dusty if it was dry season, muddy when it was wet,” Pinga said to SPIN Life.
He added: “Our players were like bats. They [practiced] at nighttime, with hardly any lighting.” (When the school set up the new turf, they made sure they had a full bank of LED arena illumination.)
Pinga told SPIN Life that as of posting, there have been no takers yet from any of the SEA Games teams. But the offer is still on the table.
Pinga is even offering other squads to try it out for themselves. “It’s open to everyone, even after the Southeast Asian Games,” he said. The turf is also available for private bookings.
For a small school of just over a thousand students, football forms a core part of Southridge’s sports program. Their varsity teams are regularly sent to tournaments both locally and abroad. Active football alumni include Yannick Tuason, a striker at Iloilo-based Kaya FC, and Nathan Alquiros, a forward at Stallion Laguna.
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