AFTER MORE than three years of absence, the Athletics Council is making a comeback.
Initial steps have been put in place by the Sanggunian ng mga Mag-aaral ng mga Paaralang Loyola ng Ateneo de Manila (Sanggunian) to revive the said sector of the student government, which was dissolved after the 2007-2008 school year.
A testament to the ever-growing power of social media, the call for revival was borne out of a post on Facebook’s Bantay Halalan group—the same group that facilitated discussion between candidates and the student body during last school year’s student council elections.
With the response positive, the Sanggunian arranged a meeting to discuss the different athletic teams’ needs and the steps that need to be taken in order to reestablish the council.
“As athletes, they have several needs which are distinct from the student body,” said AJ Elicaño of the Sanggunian’s Committee on Extracurricular Affairs.
Judging from the clamor online, quite a number of Ateneo’s student-athletes feel as if their school and student government can serve them better. Improved team marketing, more avenues for recognition and the eligibility to apply for athletic support grants came out as the most common needs.
“The fact that [athletes] are going to the offices [and it] hasn’t been working, suggests that there may be a need for a student-run council,” Elicaño continued.
The concept of an Athletics Council—a student-run body that represents and serves the school’s student-athletes—isn’t foreign to Loyola Heights. Besides the defunct college sector, a smaller scale variant has been thriving in the Ateneo High School for nearly a decade.
According to Benjo Afuang, Coordinator of the College Athletics Office, having such a council is a step in the right direction, but all parties involved must make sure that its relevance remains intact.
“Of course, I’m all for the representation of athletes,” said Afuang, “I’d love to bring [the Athletics Council] back and make it relevant, but we have to see where it’s headed this time.”
Formerly an autonomous arm of the Sanggunian, similar to the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo, the Athletics Council met its demise slowly and helplessly. Times have changed, and the problems now faced by this generation of student-athletes differ from those of years past.
“Over the years, all of the issues, the funding, the training, were addressed,” Afuang said, in a mix of English and Filipino.
Lack of time also contributed to the council’s eventual extinction, as student-athletes had to deal with academics, other extracurricular commitments and their personal lives on top of training and competition.
Probably the greatest hindrance to the council’s restoration is the possibility of apathy among different varsity teams. “Athletes before would just focus on their own team,” Afuang pointed out.
As of the moment, the Sanggunian is sorting things out in the hopes of finding the best configuration for the Athletics Council. As Elicaño put it, “We need to take into account the needs of the athletes, then we’ll go from there.”
