Leyte to recruit, spend on athletes for championship caliber training

By Provincial Media Relations Center
November 19, 2009

TACLOBAN CITY  –  A comprehensive sports and education program is cooking up for Leyte through a good recruitment and training program that would scout potential athletes from different places in the province.

Leyte Governor Carlos Jericho Petilla said to improve the provinces’, and subsequently the region’s, standing in national sports competition, there is a need to implement a good recruitment program that would provide championship caliber training for athletes with potentials.

The governor further bared this would be a comprehensive sports and education program where the recruited athletes would simultaneously train and attend school at the expense of the provincial government.

“This would be very expensive but if it’s the only way to do it, then we have to pursue this option,” Gov. Petilla said.

The pool of athletes who would be recruited under this program, it was learned, would be housed in one place where they would attend sports trainings under professional trainers and coaches and at the same time complete their school studies supervised by the Department of Education.

The vacated rooms and spaces at the former Leyte Colleges adjacent to the Leyte Sports Development Center is being eyed as the area where these athletes can be housed for their training and studies complete with the provision of the appropriate training gears and an athlete’s nutritional diet.

Meanwhile, the Leyte Sports Development Center, site of the Palarong Pambansa 2009, would be the training ground for these players, the governor added.

Sports being eyed for the training program are athletics and swimming that carry most of the medal haul during sports competition.

“Athletics and swimming comprise more or less fifty percent of the total medal tally in a sports competition such as Palaro, so these are the sport we are going to give focus first,” Gov. Petilla said.