A five-year idea has finally come to fruition.
The Ateneo Sports Shooters opened the year in style, releasing a 14-month calendar featuring the various sports teams representing the Ateneo for 2009.
Based on the well-known television series Heroes, this collaborative effort is a tribute to the athletes who have embodied commitment and desire in athletic fields of battle.
From 2003
Rick Olivares (AB IS ’89), the brains behind the concept, had the idea in mind as early as 2003. “It was an idea I bandied about in 2003 while watching a game by the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL in Philadelphia,” he said.
“When I arrived in 2005, I helped manage Ateneo Team B basketball and as a fund raiser, I thought about it. But no one knows who is on Team B, right? So I thought about an Ateneo Sports Calendar and pitched it to several departments who unfortunately were either too busy to notice or didn’t think of it as a good idea.”
He then pitched his idea to fellow Sports Shooters Alyson Yap (BS ME ‘02), Nono Felipe (BS CTM ‘01), and Scott Kho (AB Comm ‘08), who all liked the plan. Together, they brought the calendar to life, coordinating with the University Athletics Office, the coaches, and the athletes about content, schedules, and the layout.
“We thought of doing two different types of calendars — the ‘game face’ calendar where everyone looks focused and intense and the ‘artsy’ calendar where we play around with layouts and backgrounds,” Olivares said.
No easy task
Getting the job done was no easy task. First, they had to improvise with placing 18 teams without compromising the quality of the project. Also, the lack of resources prevented a proper shoot. All shots were taken in a hurried span of two weeks inside the Blue Eagle Gym.
Despite these limitations, Olivares was proud of what was accomplished. After all, the main objective of releasing this calendar was to raise funds for athletic scholarships.
“The beauty about this is giving back to the teams. All the earnings, minus what we need to pay the printer, will all go to a team and a player of our own choice,” he said.
This project is not going to be a one-year wonder. Plans for the 2010 calendar will begin as early as April with the shoots to commence on June and July.
Other contributors to the Ateneo Sports Calendar 2009 include Christopher Chua (IV BS CTM), Miguel De Leon (AB DS ’96), Den Llanos Dee, Erwin Cabbab (BS Psy ’97), and Hub Pacheco (AB Comm ‘08).
