NSAs ordered to set criteria for SEAG bets

Manila, Philippines - The Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) has tasked the various national sports associations (NSAs) to set their own criteria in selecting candidates to the coming Southeast Asian Games.

POC spokesman Joey Romasanta said this is to make the NSAs “accountable” for naming the delegates and ensuring their “competitiveness” in the Nov. 11-25 SEAG in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia.

“There will be a heavy responsibility to be placed on the shoulders of the sports associations in so far as ascertaining the competitiveness of their respective athletes,” Romasanta said yesterday.

The POC had initially went away with usual setting of a general standard for selecting delegates, such as gold medal in the past SEAG or bronze finish in the previous Asian Games.

“During the last year’s Asian Games, we had a hard time since sports have different peculiarities; some are measurable, some non-measurable. Now it will all depend on the records that NSAs will present to the monitoring heads. They have to determine whether the athlete will be categorized as one with high probability to win medals or one who is in the developmental level,” Romasanta said.

“The respective NSAs will necessarily have to come up with their own standard in terms of how they compare with the probable competition,” he added.

As the SEAG occupies the lowest level in international competitions, the NSAs are expected to try to nominate as many athletes as possible. A bloated delegation of some 700 is seen, presenting the need to raise funds to augment the P30 million allotted by the Philippine Sports Commission.

“The important thing now is to effectively do the selection process for reasons of: No. 1, to trim down the delegation size, and two, to ensure that we are competitive when we go to Indonesia, not just send in a big delegation only to come home with few medals,” Romasanta said.

Meanwhile, the POC also ordered the participating NSAs to name a team manager who will “work daily for the team’s welfare” and serve as “conduit to the SEAG POC-PSC working group.”

“The team managers will have to take a more active role now – attend to the athletes’ various needs and requirements, from uniforms to equipment, so that the coaches can exclusively concentrate on coaching and technical matters to help their athletes improve,” he said.

Olmin Leyba, Philippine Star