`WOULD RIZAL BE PROUD OF CALAMBA TODAY?

By roman romeo g. Nagpala

Here’s Lolo Rom’s appreciation of Rizal as a sportsman written 3 years ago.

Year 2005 ends with the cloud of euphoria still shrouding the whole Philippines overwhelmingly after winning the 23^rd SEA GAMES overall championship with the most number of gold in stake. As we celebrated another simple Rizal Day in the hero's birthplace, this Pinoy Old Brother (Lolo Ome) of the senior citizens group also feels to the rheumatic bones the sweeping euphoria.

More so because we all know that our very own national hero stood tall at five feet and three inches and a great sportsman during his prime.

Had it been Rizal's time during the 23^rd SEA Games, in what particular event would he be the runaway gold medallist? Based on his letter to Antonio Luna (Brussels, 3 July 1890), it would be in sharp shooting.

"As to shooting, with this I am sending you a cardboard with ten bullet holes. The board is seven and a half meters from me. At a distance of twenty-five meters I put all 20 shots inside a board 20 centimeters high and 20 centimeters wide. I go slowly, but through perseverance, I will be able to shoot fairly well and I will supplement with my will the few qualities of a shooter that nature has given me." (Epistolario Rizalino, III No. 392, p. 74.)

Rizal would have added more gold from other sports events where he notably excelled, such as boxing, fencing, pistol duel, swimming, riding, and archery. He would have been a gold medallist in tennis, too.

As a sportsman, Rizal must be proud today of our fellow Calambeño Ronnie Alcano, an outstanding two-gold medallist in the billiard games.

109 years after his martyrdom at the Luneta, would Rizal be proud of Calamba in the field of sports? Rizal believed in perseverance. In sports this means proper training, long hours of practice games in available appropriate sports venues. Do we have standard quality sports facilities in Calamba today?

Yes it is true Calamba is now a proud city. She boasts of having five industrial parks and estates - haven to local and foreign investor-locators - providing employment and producing huge export products to boost the national economy.

In tourism, Calamba has been declared the Spa Capital of the Philippines, the bedrock of lodes of hot spring mineral waters freely flowing in abounding swimming pools and resorts. She is hostess to hordes of vacationers, local and foreign tourists teeming the swimming pools and resorts during summer. Her treasury has the gross annual income of six hundred fifty million pesos (PhP650M) in 2004.

Yet, despite all these all through the years, the stark reality faces Calamba to the face - the City of Calamba does not have a public sports center to be proud of.

Calamba being at the center point to the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon, could be an ideal venue to host some PBA on tour games. But she does not have such sports facilities. She could also be an alternative venue to the regular Southern Tagalog Regional Athletic Association (STRAA) meet and Palarong Pambansa; yet she does not have the standard facilities for such games. In all these, she fails to gain additional income to her treasury.

Alas and alack, the first-ever Calamba Citywide Team Tennis Tournament 2005 exposes the naked truth that the City of Calamba does not own even a single public tennis court.

Tournament director Joey Javier aptly stated in the awards night: "We had to face reality to proceed and successfully finish the tournament. We had scheduled official games simultaneously only during weekends at different tennis courts within the City - in Camp Vicente Lim, Canlubang Old Course, Miramonte-Pansol, and Calamba Riverside-Bañadero. Practice games were at times held at Bukal Kay-Tala tennis courts, Brgy. Looc, in the outskirt of the City."

Faced with this reality, Javier initiated a manifesto, signed by over one hundred participants from 23 teams of the five tennis clubs in the City. The manifesto is urging the City Administration to seriously plan and develop a project with appropriate funds for the construction and development of a public sports center.

Javier said: "We do this for and in behalf of the succeeding generations. In memory of our National Hero, we propose the construction and development of 'GAT JOSE RIZAL MEMORIAL SPORTS VILLAGE' to house the facilities for various games, i.e., basketball, volleyball, baseball, track-and-field, swimming, tennis, badminton, sepak takraw, boxing, fitness gym, and other amenities."

Moreover, Javier said: "Let us all remember that sports, per se, is a well-tested and internationally accepted antidote to the creeping menace of illegal drugs worldwide. Besides, sport is a healthy pastime to veer away from different vices of the present generation."

"Remember Rizal's dictum that our youth is the hope of our fatherland, so let us all work together for the youth of Calamba, and offer 'GAT JOSE RIZAL MEMORIAL SPORTS VILLAGE' to the Great Malayan," concluded Javier.

There will be more Rizal Day celebrations in the years to come. Yet, would Rizal be happy soon in the not far distant future with the completion of a sports village in Calamba, in memoriam?

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