WITH no less than President Marcos giving his unequivocal support, the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) will continue to pursue an aggressive grassroots sports development program aimed at producing more world-class Filipino athletes.

Newly-appointed PSC Commissioner Edward Hayco believes it can be done.

And Hayco, a well-known businessman-entrepreneur from Cebu who was appointed to the government sports body by President Marcos only last December, said the PSC needs only to replicate the sports program of Cebu and Baguio to achieve its goal.

“We did it in Cebu. They did it in Baguio. We only have to replicate the success of these two sports-oriented cities and make it work nationwide,” said Hayco in an interview with “Sports on Air” recently.

“As a PSC commissioner, I will be focusing on public schools which is similar to our programs when I was the Cebu City Sports Commision chairman,” claimed Hayco.

“After all, the least privileged athletes are from public schools. Hopefully, I can convince PSC to focus on public schools through a grassroots program,” added Hayco.

Hayco now 64, hopes to contribute to the success of Philipppine sports by using his God-given talent in business and entrepreneurship and devoting more time for sports development.

“I am actually a businessman and entrepreneur that creates products. A businessman markets the product and makes it into a business,“said Hayco, who previously served as head of the Cebu City Sports Commission.

“We have this gift of seeing things on a different point of view. Sports to me is like a product. Anong produkto natin? Mga atletang magagaling at nananalo. But as a businessman, the challenge is kung paano tayo mag-produce ng magandang produkto,” explained Hayco, also known as the “Father of Dancesports” in Cebu City..

“Sa sports, we don’t produce good athletes na parang nagpupulot ka lang ng kahit sino sa forest. We have to farm, Parang cornfield. We don’t look for a corn in a forest. We farmed to harvest the best corn possible.”

“That’s the concept of grassroots program. Ginawa namin ang grassroots program sa Cebu using business concepts. A grassroots program is not a tournament or competition. It is what happens before it. Sa Cebu, yung grassroots program natin doesn’t start with event. We do have the monthly event na Cebu City Junior Olympics. But the kids that we put into it started into the intrams level.”

Hayco stressed that the Cebu Sports Commission worked in tandem with the Depatment of Education (Deped).

“In Cebu City alone, we have more than 30,000-40,000 kids start from intrams. Kalahati aakyat sa division meet, kaya magiging 20,000.

Tapos aakyat sa unit meet ang 10,000, aakyat sa city meet ang 5,000, tapos aakyat sa CVIRAA or regional meet yun 3,000. Aakyat pa kung sinong mananalo sa CVIRAA papuntang Palarong Pambansa.That’s maybe 1,000.”

“So what happens to the 29,000 is the grassroots program. We prepare them from the intrams level, we train the kids. In Cebu, we have around 10,000 kids under the program, we have 60 kids that we fund out of 30-40 public schools. That’s the program in Cebu, which we now want to be replicated as much as possible in all the LGUs in the Philippines.”

Hayco claimed he hit the ground running.

“I have already talked to Ilocos City Mayor Michael Keon and formulated a program with him. I also talked to Tarlac Governor Susan Yap.

That’s for Luzon.I will also be talking to some people who will support the grassroots program in Mindanao.”

“I can only move and start the grassroots program intensely and comprehensively after our PSC strategic planning session. Let’s pray that the program will be fully embraced by the Chairman and the Commisioners. I’m sure there will be a lot of concepts that will be put on the table and I have to sell our grassroots program. There would be other people who have their own concepts on what the grassroots is all about,” explained Hayco, adding he experienced it all on the ground for the past 25 years.

Hayco also said he had initial talks with the Philippine Sports Institute (PSI).

“We discussed a lot of things, including creating a school for sports program in DepEd. It should be a classroom-based, section-based because you can only control the athletes in public school if they are all in one classroom. The athletes should be in different classroom mixed with other kids. They cannot leave the classroom by 2 pm or 3 pm to practice. They have all to be in one classroom. If you’re on the ground, you will understand it.”

“Another one is to campaign, classroom by classroom, to ask the kids to join the sports program. They don’t just go to you and to join a sport.

You have to encourage and make them understand. These are things that happen on the ground level which doesn’t usually reach the top.”

Hayco also discussed the difference between grasroots and elite coaches.

“There’s really a big difference between grassroots and elite coaches and we understood it very well. The grassroots coaches don’t have to be super competent but they just need to have the right basics to be able to organize effectively the grassroots program of DepEd and intrams level. PSI will be collaborating with us closely to grow the level of coaching competence upward.”

Asked about his concept of regionalizing and decentralizing the training of national athletes, Hayco was very clear.

“I know it’s gonna be difficult and challenging to regionalize and decentralize the training of national athletes. I know there’s gonna be some resistance and i gonna throw it and put it on the table and let a healthy discussion during the strategic planning.”

“Why decentralized? It’s a business concept. Toyota is one of the top car manufacturers in the world. And they all made in Japan but they put up car manufacturing plants in US,and even Europe Why centralized it in Manila? It doesn’t make sense. Three best examples why we should be decentralizing the national team and athletes training. Baguio, Cebu, Zamboanga. Baguio is always No. 1 in Batang Pinoy and Cebu is No. 2 because the regional training center are there. There is always a dispersal and cascade of knowledge wherever we regionalize an operation or a center of manufacturing. IPhone said they’re manufacturing to China. What happened? China knows how to make cellphone cheap. Dati sa Silicon Valley. That’s a business concept. So we have to paradigm shift what we believe in. In the words of Mark Zuckerberg during his Harvard speech, enterpreneurship is not about just business alone. Its social enterpreneur. Its about creating change. That’s entrepreneur.

Every change, as he said, will have a lot of resistance, and that’s works with it.”

“But I will need your help to convince people to talk to them that regionalizing elite and grassroots sports will make the quality of the athletes go up because that is a proven business concept.” With reports from Gab Ferreras