Fair Play: Invest in your child's future this summer

(This is my Fair Play column for Sun.Star Cebu's March 14 edition)
AS you can tell from the weather, summer is almost here. With school out and a lot of idle time in their hands, summer is the perfect time to get your kids into sports.

Sweating it out and playing under the sun may turn them a few shades darker, but that’s a whole lot better than them accidentally clicking a fifty shades of grey parody on YouTube, right? Try explaining that to your kid.



In Cebu, there are a lot of options for summer camps as some of the schools offer summer lessons for all kids. You can join football, tennis, basketball, or any other sport your kid fancies.

And, thanks to the Cebu City Sports Commission, there are free summer lessons for 16 sports! That’s right, sixteen!

If you want to learn arnis, archery, boxing, badminton, chess, dancesports, karatedo, futsal, sepak takraw, softball, taekwondo, table tennis, track and field, volleyball, weightlifting and touch rugby, go hook up with the CCSC’s office at the Cebu City Sports Center.

And that’s not all! These free lessons are offered in seven school gyms in the North District and eight school gyms in the South District, so you really don’t have an excuse at all not to let your kids pick up a new sport this summer, right?

For the North district, the summer clinics will be at the school gyms of City Central School, Hipodromo, Lahug, Mabolo, Tejero, Zapatera, Bo. Luz and Talamban.

For the South District, it will be at Don Vicente Rama, Pardo, Mambaling, Labangon, Punta Princesia, Guadalupe, Inayawan and the San Nicolas school gyms.

Take your pick among the venues and decide which sport you’d like your kid to take this summer.

And here’s another thing, most of the coaches in the summer clinic are volunteers who usually represent Team Cebu City in national tournaments. They are also linked with the school teams and that’s what’s important.

If your kid shows enough potential, these coaches could recommend them to their schools for that much sought-after athletic scholarship.

Imagine that, you get free training and if you’re good enough, you get to go to school, for free.

Of course, before you entertain those dreams, there’s that need to make the first step--get your kid into sport.

If you think your kid doesn’t have the technical skills for basketball, football, volleyball or those type of sports, well, fret not, that’s the purpose of the clinic, to teach them the basics.

And if you think your kid doesn’t have any skills at all, there’s still hope. Like I’ve been telling people, anyone can run, jump or throw things, and they can sign up for track and field lessons and next to basketball, track and field is the most lucrative sport.

Just check out the runners who pocket at least P5,000 per week in the fun runs? And these are not even the top prizes for the 21Ks or the 16Ks but the prizes for the short-distance categories like the 3Ks, or 5Ks.

And if their too big for the running or jumping events, there’s the discus throw or the javelin throw, so there are a lot of options. These events too offer athletic scholarships, all the way to college.

So, what are you waiting for? Get your kid into sports this summer. It may be the biggest investment in your family.

BY THE NUMBERS. Over 600 journalists all over the world attended the press conference for the Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight. That’s more people than those who watched Pacquiao’s first fight in the US against Lehlohonolo Ledwaba back in June 2001.

Makes you wonder, come fight night, which number would be greater—the list of accredited sportswriters or the list of Filipino politicians who will be there?

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