THE saddest news to come out of the Asian Games is not the narrowly missed medals, or even the upset suffered by our beloved basketball team, Gilas Pilipinas.
Rather, it’s the news that our national volleyball players, men and women alike, were denied their due allowances as national athletes. They had to pay even for a number of basic needs with their own money.
As a top volleyball player has revealed, many of them were forced to borrow from friends and teammates for food, transport, and other necessities.
READ Lao says he inherited P30M in PNVF debts, spent P10M of own money
Imagine this: When they were called to practice for the Asian Games, sometimes only seven or eight out of, say, 12 players, were able to appear. The reason: There was no money for transportation, and even when they made it to the practice venue, they didn’t have enough for food and snacks and for fare to return home.
The team’s situation was exposed by Alas Men’s captain Bryan Bagunas in an interview on the Sunday following their loss to South Korea in their opening game in Japan.
In the SPIN.ph article, Bagunas is quoted as saying: “The men’s team had gone without an allowance since July, leaving some players, many of them student-athletes, with little choice but to borrow money just to make it to training.
“Regarding sa allowance namin, talagang kahit 'yung mga players, nangungutang na from the other players or sa mga ibang tao para makapunta sa training and sa pauwi sa kanilang bahay.
“Sobrang tough para sa amin na mag-ensayo araw-araw. Minsan pito lang kami nag-e-ensayo, walo, gano'n. Sobrang hirap, sobrang tough.”
READ Alas Men, Women players claim paying for own expenses at Asiad
How and why this happened at all is the kind of inquiry the Senate should make, instead of investigating why Gilas Pilipinas lost the Asian Games basketball title, which is the proposal of Senator Bong Go.
We wish to inform Bong Go that the reason Gilas lost is because the other teams played better and our team just did not have it this time, which is normal in any sports competition. You win some, you lose some.
But there is no justification at all in the way our volleyball teams were treated.
Not after their association, the Philippine National Volleyball Federation, spent P2 billion of largely public money — our taxpayers’ money — to host last year’s FIVB Men’s World Volleyball Championship.
Not when volleyball as a sport is enjoying unprecedented domestic success and popularity, which means sponsors are not far behind. Not when we are set to host the FIVB Women’s World Volleyball Championship soon, which means our largely poor nation is again likely to lose another arm and a leg. Not when our sports officials have been adamant about hosting many Asian volleyball meets that have cost us millions of pesos.
Not when, again, imagine this, when the current head of the PNVF, Frank Lao, is offering an additional P100,000 incentive to the country’s beach volleyball teams if they bring in the gold.
One can only cringe — no, actually convulse — when faced with a sports association ready to host tournaments running into billions but cannot give its athletes the meager allowances that make them train and compete without going into debt and hunger.
Given all that, dangling a one-hundred thousand bonus for a gold medal seems almost cruel.
No wonder then that our volleyball teams are eaten for breakfast in most international tournaments, the latest being at this Asian Games where the women’s team finished ninth. NINTH!!
This finish should give our volleyball, as well as our national sports officials, recurring nightmares over their callous disregard for our athletes.
Nightmares compounded by their now fatal addiction to power and its perks. Now, who among them wants to change the way things go? Why, they want things to stay exactly as they are!
And why not? They travel for free, stay at plush hotels, are dined and wined, and never worry about transport and food. We can also surmise that they have unlimited travel allowances for expenses that probably never come under any scare of scrutiny.
Except for our star athletes, the rest who come under the national sports pools grovel for crumbs.
Our priorities are not only outstandingly screwed, they are offensively misplaced. Officials seem to be paying more attention to the lavish hosting of international events and cozying up to foreign sports leaders by treating them like royals. Yet every centavo of that could have gone first to serious sports development, participation in foreign competitions, the hiring of foreign coaches — and, yes please, allowances and nutrition for our athletes.
But maybe there’ll be little money left for these officials if they focus on sending athletes to travel and compete abroad where the game is tougher and competitors more varied. (So what if our players gain more experience?) That appears to be nonsensical to these sports officials whose idea of sports development is hosting international events. The more expensive these go and the more participants there are, the better. (Wonder who’s to gain from this?)
Your guess is as good as mine.
The Philippine National Volleyball Federation (PNVF) has acknowledged the accuracy of Bagunas’ complaints.
The federation has apologized in a statement: “The [PNVF] extends its sincerest apologies to all our national athletes for the difficulties they have experienced… This is a situation that no national athlete should ever have to endure.”
Apology accepted.
But is this enough?
The PNVF has, pitiably, gone berserk from the time its previous president Tats Suzara tied up the country to two horribly expensive world championships. He was replaced, and his replacement Tony Boy Liao was also mired in scandal. Now, the new leadership of Frank Lao has offered an olive branch — he says he wants to fix the association’s mess, and has, thankfully, begun by acknowledging that Bagulos’s complaints are very real.
This monstrous treatment of our national athletes is not something we should all just forget and chalk up to experience. Our athletes cannot keep getting buried under the lessons that their officials keep saying they are learning from.
Really, it’s time a thorough investigation of the finances of the Philippine National Volleyball Federation be undertaken. And for a change — just this one time, finally — punish the culprits please.
If Senator Bong Go really wants to make himself relevant, he should immediately push for a Senate inquiry. Forget Gilas Pilipinas, that team’s association can take care of its own problems. Instead, take a hard look at volleyball, its finances and its inner operations, and tell us taxpayers what is wrong and what is to be done.
That association seems to have been infested. Some extermination is in order. Senator Go, we do mean legal extermination.
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