Marikina City—Team Visayas’ drive for a fourth straight crown in the annual National Milo Little Olympics hit a brick wall as hosts National Capital Region (NCR), playing with just their second best athletes, put up sterling performances in the first day of competition at the Marikina Sports Park here.
NCR came out with guns blazing as its athletes shocked Visayas’ top bets to take the lead in the medal standings with a record of 36-25-12 (gold-silver-bronze). The Bisdaks are at second with an 18-15-17 tally while Luzon is at third with a 15-10-18 haul. At fourth place is Mindanao with an 8-10-22 harvest after the first day with games in taekwondo, sipa, sepak takraw and gymnastics already done.
Team Visayas has crawled back in the final day in the past three editions of this meet but it might take a miracle for the Bisdaks to do that again against a determined NCR team that is playing at home for the first time.
“I think Visayas is on rough waters right now,” said Visayas delegation head Ricky Ballesteros. “We anticipated a good performance from NCR in their home court. So we have to double our efforts in the final day.”
Team Visayas put itself in a tight situation entering the final day again after powerhouse ball games teams such as Southwestern University secondary girls volleyball team, Abellana National School (ANS) sepak takraw team, Cabancalan National High School volleyball boys team and the Moalboal Elementary School volleyball boys team bowed to NCR’s bets yesterday.
However, SWU still has a chance to redeem itself as it plays NCR in the finals today after finishing with identical 1-1 (win-loss) records in the preliminary stage.
“I am very surprised with our wins because we competed against national champions last year,” said NCR delegation head Robert Milton Calo, who earlier announced NCR will be fielding in class B teams after its top teams that dominated the regional finals had other commitments.
All is not lost for the Bisdaks as competition wraps up today in other events including some in swimming and track and field. This means the Visayas can still stage another come-from-behind win and complete the full cycle of having won in the Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and NCR.
“We still hope that our raquet sports will help us because I heard they are all in the finals,” said Ballesteros.
decent outing
The Bisdaks actually put up a decent performance yesterday but not enough to outlast the rampaging NCR athletes.
In the track and field competition, Ilo-ilo National High School’s Juneiza Mae Sustituedo was the bright spot for the Bisdaks as she captured a gold medal by topping the 3,000-meter run in the secondary girls division with a time of 11 minutes and 8.3 seconds.
Visayas’ other gold medalists were Niño Soria (long jump secondary boys), Michelle del Coro and Carl Babao (shot put elementary division), Raul Perez Jr. and Pearl Angeline Abellar (100m run in the secondary division), Enrico Lorenzo Avila (100m elementary division) and Jerome Medalla (secondary boys javelin throw).
Visayas got badly beaten in the pool by bets from NCR as only Karen Maye Indaya (100-meter backstroke) and Rian Marco Tirol (50-meter breaststroke) won gold medals in the elementary division. NCR’s tankers bagged 19 gold medals.
Visayas’ jins Stephanie Arrieta and Maye Coran also contributed a gold in the elementary division together with Irene Bermejo and Zolen Frajes in the secondary girls and Jason Locsin in the secondary boys division.
The Inayawan Elementary School also won a gold medal in Sipa after beating Marikina Elementary School in the finals.
Viasyas will be pinning its hopes on several teams which will be playing their finals matches in the last day today.
Among them are the Visayas’ football teams composed of the Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu (SHS-AdC) and the Don Bosco Technology Center (DBTC), who are competing in the secondary and elementary division finals, respectively.
University of Cebu’s (UC) table tennis team will play in the finals today against Mindanao after escaping NCR yesterday,2-1. Cebu City Central School will also play against Mindanao in the elementary division table tennis competition. The table tennis girls team from UC will vie against Mindanao for the gold.
In lawn tennis, Bright Academy’s netters proved its worth after winning over NCR and Luzon in the high school girls and elementary boys and girls divisions. They will vie for the gold today against Mindanao.