AFTER being denied actual training for more than a year, locally-based members of the national track and field team will finally get to resume workouts starting July 15 at the Philippine Sports Commission Teacher’s Camp in Baguio City, according to athletics chief Philip Ella Juico.
“We already have the venue and we already have the housing,” Juico said of the training camp where 42 athletes and coaches are set to train for the 30th Vietnam Southeast Asian Games set Nov. 21 to Dec. 2 in Hanoi.
Juico, who heads the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association, said that he had wanted an earlier date for the athletes and coaches to get back to the track “but this is what the PSC gave us based on their present budget.”
Except for online physical fitness and conditioning training, majority, if not all, of the national team members have not been able to train properly due to the present restrictive conditions imposed by the government due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Juico had tried numerous times last year to wangle a training camp for the national athletes and coaches, at the La Salle campus in Sta. Rosa, Laguna and the New Clark City Athletic Stadium in Capas, Tarlac, but was turned down by the Inter-Agency Task Force in charge of the virus crisis.
The New Clark City Athletic Stadium was also supposed to be the venue of the National Open track and field championships. Juico said the PSC Teacher’s Camp track oval in Baguio will serve as the venue for the competition to be held in mid-September and will also serve as the final national team tryouts for the Vietnam SEA Games.
“We will call it the National Open Final Selection and we want it to be held at least two months before the SEA Games,” he said, adding that he still had to talk to the PSC and Baguio government authorities about the matter.
