I AM sure it is not just my imagination. It is for real.

There is a resurgence in Philippine sports with the emergence of young athletes in different disciplines showing a lot of potential for the future.

And I am not just referring to the duo of world class athletes EJ Obiena and Caloy Yulo in athletics and gymnastics respectively. EJ has already qualified for the Olympics, Caloy I am sure will follow suit.

Women’s volleyball for one with several current and just graduated UAAP players, the likes of Eya Laure, Faith Nisperos, Angel Canino, Alyssa Solomon, Bella Belen, and Thea Gacate, to mention a few, assuring a turnover of athletes from current but near aging superstars.

Bowling, a sport where we used to dominate in the late 70’s and 80’s has recently produced young champions.

Art Barrientos won the Asian Youth Masters title in Thailand plus the boys’ team gold too.

World pool champiobs Johann Chua and James Aranas , may not be that young , both are 31 but in billiards, believe me, they are young.

Badminton has the pair of Alvin Morada and Christian Bernardo in their mid 20’s and they have made a tremendous improvement in their world rankings.

Our U 16 girls basketball team is doing well in Jordan, and set to move to Group A from Group B two years from now.

Young chess champion Antonella Racasa is another example, and I am sure there are other sports that are experiencing the same thing.

But for this piece, I will dwell on the sport of archery, a proven discipline where Filipinos can compete anywhere without any height or weight disadvantage.

Less than two years ago, I wrote that the sport was gaining popularity with a lot of young people getting into the sport, I even went to Marikina one time to interview young archers training and competing there.

Now just two days ago, I had a long one on one with my old friend Nino Sinco, who has gone back to his original love in sport, archery, after a long long time.

He was in the 1977 SEA Games and went home with a silver medal, and now, as a senior citizen, he resumed shooting arrows but not to make it to the national team anymore.

But he is in the national team , the youth team in particular, as a coach this time, and he says given the support it needs, the young archers he has right now can be at the world level in a few years’ time.

And he knew what he was talking about as he just returned from Limerick, Ireland, venue of this year’s World Youth Archery Championship, and he took pride in the fact that despite no podium finishes, the team, featuring seven rookies of the 10 man line up, set four national records plus respectable finishes in their events.

In the U-21, Jonathan Reaport set a new 72-arrow record of 632 as he finished 28th of 87 entries in the recurve, Baguio bet Alon Yuan Jucutan did the same in the U-18 in the compound event with a record of 673, on top of finishing 17th in the field of 41 entries in the QR round.

Gwyneth Garcia from Angeles City set 2 new records in the 36 arrow round with 326, then a new total of 645 in the 72 arrow round , this was in the U-18 women’s compound.

But for me, the most impressive was Ada Lagrada from Palawan who came out of nowhere to earn a slot in the qualifying tournament in Cebu, a complete rookie, she was in 63rd place in the qualifying but went all the way to 17th overall in the 72 women-field

To think too that Nino only started training them as a team early June, both Reaport and Lagrada plus Charlene Santos have also opted to focus on archery and temporarily shelving their studies in their desire to earn Olympic berths , but only if they do well in the Asian Championship and the Asian Games later this year, assuming they make it to the senior team.

What these young archers need is continuous training in the next two years at least for the SEA Games, then 4 years later, in the Asian Games.

But the more important thing is for the NSA to put in place a long term developmental program for its young archers.

Now that we have to see.

LOOSE CHANGE: i will be off to Cagayan de Oro next week to be one of the judges in the sportswriting category in the National Students Press Conference. I will devote next week’s piece to that event….PVL ‘s Ricky Palou wants to do a serious program to promote men’s volleyball, I had a long one on one with him and will share my talk with him in the future…PSC Commissioner Bong Coo is looking forward to the planned bowling center at the RMSC, and it will feature top of the line equipment’s for our bowlers. By Lito Ciinco

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