A football Santa all season
I GUESS the fact that it is the Christmas season gives me a reason to refer to someone who has been kind to sports a Santa Claus.
And Los Angeles-based businessman and sports patron Pike Braga certainly falls under that category, I learned of this when he dropped by last week at the office of his friend, Commissioner Fritz Gaston at the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) .
Pike wanted to explore tie ups with the PSC for his boys and girls grassroots football program based in Iloilo, something he started pre-COVID times out of his passion for the sport, he being a former football player himself with the University of the Philippines-Los Baños (UP-LB).
No, Pike is not asking for financial help from the PSC , he funds his program from his own and recently, from his tie up with a former European football player and coach Angelo Martins, who was in the Philippines early this year and watched Pike’s football festival in Iloilo that attracted around a thousand kids .
But then that is going ahead of the story.
More on Pike’s background in football, it is not his being a former UP-LB and national player that spurred him to go into the sport, it is the fact that he is a native of Barotac Nuevo in Iloilo that eventually made him a Santa Claus of sorts for the sport.
Ironically, he did not play football when he was a kid, only in college but his being from the football capital of the Philippines was enough thiugh he admitted he had to exert double effort to prove he could play the game.
He even recruited young players from Barotac Nuevo and looked for schools for them in Laguna just so they could help train the UP-LB team, and Pike was rewarded with a national title for his alma mater because of this.
His primary purpose us to help discover and train Filipino players to be able to play internationally at the world stage, furmly believing that we do have the talents and it is a matter of effort and time that he will see that dream become a reality.
But he also has a personal reason for his support for a grassroits foitball program in Iloilo. He wants to bring back the glory days of his native place, citing the fact that in the past, a national team will not be without players from Barotac Nuevo, note the plural form.
.Right now, he says there are still good potentials , a lot of them, but there has to be a long term developmental program he says, and now Pike, who is the president of the Barotac Nuevo Football Club, has established a partnership between the Pike Braga Sports and Development Foundation and Angelo to form the FCB Elite Football Philippines.
And they have big dreams, believe me, including construction of a world class football field within a mall, with Angelo’s football friends in Europe as foreign investors, making Pike even more optimistic about his football dreams for the country.
What is fortunate too is that Pike is not into it for the money, he has enough, having established a stem cell based health care business both in Los Angeles and here.
He says his business gives him the opportunity and means to fund his dream and passion for football. He has also established foundations to help him raise money, holding golf tournaments in the United States is one way as he is also into golf, not with the same passion for football though but more to help his caddie’s son, Bobe Salahog, and the latter already became a world junior golf champion at the age of 19 earlier this year.
And that is why you have to give it to Pike, he puts his money where his mouth is, a real Santa Claus for young kids in football , and for golf too.
By the way, I did Part 2 of our Banahaw Christmas gift giving last Saturday in Brgy . Sta. Lucia in Dolores, together with the Cebuana Lhuillier Foundation of another sports patron Jean Henri Lhuillier, a regular supporter of the event.
The Foundation sent its scholars and staff who joined me, they took care of the program and games, very big help for me as we were almost overwhelmed with the more than 150 kids ,some with parents and guardians , attending.
We prepared for 100 only though we had some extra gifts but not enough, same for the food, though in the end, we managed but were all tired, feeling fulfilled at the same time.
My Christmas gift to the scholars and staffers, an experience of Mt. Banahaw as I brought them to the twin falls of Sta. Lucia where they bathed under the falls and dipped into the cold natural pools of my beloved mountain.
Thank you all.
