New group formed to help develop town’s youth into top-caliber athletes

Minglanilla aims to become a producer of top caliber athletes for Cebu Province with the founding of a new group, the Outstanding Youth for Education, Entrepreneurship & Arts (O’YEEA)-Minglanilla.

Francis Gerard “Jigger” Canedo, the group’s president, said they will take off from where the now defunct Minglanilla Council of Youth left off, which is to develop the youth for sports and cultural arts.

According to Canedo, one of the sports personalities that the defunct group—which operated in the 80s and 90s—was able to produce is Loloi Rendon in dancesports.

When the Sangguniang Kabataan was created, the group ceased to function. This, coupled with the lack of programs, forced Minglanilla talents to represent other places instead.

The new group’s first activity was the O’YEEA football clinic held last month handled by the Cebu Queen City United Football Club and graced by Philippine Azkals coach Hans Michael Weiss.

Canedo said aside from football, they have started training in taekwondo, badminton, baseball and frisbee.

“Our main objective in youth development is focusing on values education or value-adding programs to make them better and more responsible leaders, and sports is one of the medium,” Canedo said.

He added “sports can gather the youth and provides us with the necessary exposure that we need to get the resources to sustain our programs.”

When the group gets its accreditation from the Municipality of Minglanilla, it will make them better able to manage the facilities that the town has.

The Minglanilla Central School boasts of a football field and a gym, which the group hopes to rehabilitate.

The group has incorporated football as one of their sports program not only because of the growing popularity of the sport but also because they have also decided to make use of their own facilities.

Canedo said that some teams such as the University of San Carlos make use of the field for training.

Aside from needing to develop the field, Canedo also said they lack the equipment, a problem which he hopes they will be able to address through donors.

The group will have a soft launching next month while a grand launching is being planned for next summer, wherein tournaments for football, baseball and taekwondo will be held.

Canedo said they decided to conduct a football clinic to see how many participants they could gather.

He said they will be working with the Cebu Football Association to further develop football in Minglanilla.

“We hope to conduct a series of clinics to teach public school teachers to become officials as well as make students better equipped in sports.”

For now, the group will be concentrating on developing the elementary level because the SK is handling the secondary division. He said they will later come up with programs that will complement that of the SK’s so there would be no conflict.