Cebu City to hold Public School hoop tourney

IN order to make sure that Cebu City has a basketball team ready, willing and able to represent it in case the private schools are once again not able to do so, Cebu City Vice Mayor Augustus “Joy” Young along with officials of the Department of Education has come up with the 1st Cebu City Public School Basketball Tournament, which is slated to open on Aug. 20 at the Cebu City Sports Institute, formerly the San Nicolas Sports Complex.

The tournament will serve as part of the selection process to establish an institutionalized basketball training pool for students among the public schools in Cebu.

Its primary purpose is to identify and train potential talents, harness their individual skills and develop their character, preparing them to become members of Team Cebu City, that will represent the city in local, regional and national competitions.

In its initial season, there will be a total of 16 teams, with eight each coming from the north and the south districts of the city. The teams will be bracketed into two in each district with each bracket playing a single round-robin to determine the top teams. The top teams will then play one another for the district championship with the winners of that title game duking it out for the overall title.

From that tournament, a total of 30 players, 15 from each district will be selected to comprise the DepEd-Team Cebu City training pool. The top 15 players will then represent the public schools in the Cebu City Olympics.

Bracket A in the North district is composed of Lahug, Busay, Barrio Luz and Apas while Bracket B is made up of Cebu City Central, Zapatera, Abellana and Tejero. Meanwhile, Bracket A of the South district is composed of Bulacao, Pardo, Don Vicente Rama and Basak. Bracket B will be made up of Don Ramon Duterte, Tisa, Gothong and Don Sergio Osmena.  Correspondent Jonas Panerio