Dumaguete City—As typhoon Pablo left after ravaging Visayas and Mindanao, the Cebu City Niños pounded the opposition at the pool when the 2012 Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association (CVIRAA) meet resumed at exactly 1 p.m. yesterday.
Action in the annual meet was stopped last Tuesday when typhoon Pablo unloaded its full wrath leaving a massive swath of destruction in its wake.
The Niños closed the swimming event by hauling 22 more gold medals yesterday, to bring their total to a tournament-best 40 gilts.
Michael Ichiro Kong and Beth Mae Arellano led Cebu City’s massive harvest in the high school division while Karen Mae Indaya powered the elementary campaign of the defending champions.
Kong and Arellano won six gold medals each including two from the relays while Indaya collected five individual and two relay gold medals.
Meanwhile, the delay is causing chaos in the remaining games. Adding more woes to the delegates is the province-wide blackout in Negros Oriental which greatly affected the events using electronic scoring.
The black-out is expected to last until tomorrow according to CVIRAA technical director Dr. Danilo Villadolid of DepEd who advised the tournament managers and officials of some events to temporarily use manual scoring.
This year’s Regional Games is scheduled to end this Friday.
“We were not able to anticipate the early arrival of the typhoon but we already addressed the problem by moving some events yesterday. Thank God we were able to address the problem,” said Villadolid.
“The only major problem we are facing right now is the power outage and we are currently doing our best to utilize all available power sources and devices to help us finish and officiate the games properly and successfully,” added Villadolid.
Events like taekwondo, gymnastics and arnis are the ones greatly affected by the blackout according to Villadolid who said that this is the first time that the annual meet encountered such a problem.
However, the spirit of voluntarism and dedication showed by the teachers who worked overtime in pitch-black venues just to finish the games on time more than made up for the slack.
At the Lamberto Macias Cultural and Sports Complex, the track and field event finished at around six in the evening with results still to be tabulated.
“It is very difficult to handle this kind of situation but I am happy that everyone here helped each other after last Tuesday’s calamity. So it’s encouraging in some way to work harder to make this event successful,” said track and field official and Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu (SHS-AdC) coach Presing Capangpangan.