Besao VI: Gameday

St. Mary’s High School of Sagada backed out of our soccer friendly just days before it was scheduled. The gym teacher, Roger Gawidan, was able to find some soccer players that were willing to play on only a few days notice. They were 6 soccer players on full athletic scholarship at the nearby Mountain Province State Polytechnic College. St. James held their own against the scholarship athletes who were as many as 7 years older than the St. James players. MPSPC was clearly the more polished team, but that did not stop St. James from keeping the game close. At one point in the second half St. James was down only 5-4. However, the experience and advanced ball handling of our visitors allowed them to run ahead to a final score of 8-4. Despite playing soccer for only one month, we were able to hold our own against the best team the Mountain Province has to offer.

I couldn’t be prouder of the effort shown by the players in the past month. St. James is a young team that has shown tremendous skill in soccer in a very short period of time. We started 3 sophomores and one freshman, with another sophomore and freshman each seeing lots of playing time off the bench. Our goals came from senior and team captain Omar Lee Aiudengan, sophomore Jeremy Baguilod, and sophomore Ferdinand Cabog scored twice.

Here was a schedule of events:

7:00am- Start cooking 4 kilos of pork, 1 big bag of beans, and 8 kilos of rice. The simple yet hardy lunch costs only $0.60 US cent per head.

9:00am- Church starts. All players are in attendance.

10:30am- Church ends and warm ups begin. We see who can kick the ball through the tire first to determine who will be shirts and who will be skins.

11:00am- Kickoff. MPSPC is joined by one rotating St. James reserve player to complete the 7 on 7 scrimmage.

12:45pm- Game ends, players from both teams eat lunch together.

1:30pm- MPSPC players show some new drills to the St. James coaches and players and leave the players with words of encouragement and an offer for a rematch.

2:00pm- I run some conditioning exercises. A bus passes by while we are doing bear crawls, undoubtedly causing some new unpredictable stereotype.

2:15pm- I declare practice is over and everyone is free to go home.

2:16pm- All the reserve players (players who didn’t play vs MPSPC) and a few starters set up goals and have their own scrimmage.

4:30pm- The scrimmage ends and we all eat the leftovers from lunch.

5:00pm- I bid farewell to the team and we finally disperse after a rather epic day of sports.

Kicking the ball through the tire

Pregame

Lunch Time

Besao Part V: Bryan Baldas

I have now been working at St. James high school for one month. It did not take me very long to notice one student that seemed a little bit different. He is a senior that had expressed interest in the soccer team named Bryan Baldas. Turns out the reason for his difference is that he is 21 years old, 5 or 6 years older than most of his classmates. I recently spent some time talking to him and I found his story fascinating. It starts after graduating from elementary school in Besao. He moved from Besao to Baguio (The biggest city north of Manila) where he spent 5 years unable to stick around at the high schools. This was partially due to very large class sizes. It is exceptionally easy for an unmotivated youth to fall through the gaping cracks in a class of 50. In those 5 years he accomplished little as an out of school youth. He went to class for a few days at the beginning of each year, then dropped out. He did what he could to eat, and slowly developed his trade as a car mechanic. Then he went to a weeding. This weeding took place in Agawa, his former home and a barangay of Besao. While in Agawa his grandfather informed him that as an 18 year old he would enroll as a freshman at St. James. Shortly thereafter he began the school year as a freshman for a sixth and final time. Despite many predictions to the contrary, he found success at St. James. Rather than disappearing through the cracks he became heavily involved in many church and community activities. He currently co-captains the soccer team and is an active member of the cultural troop at St. James.

When I asked him about what was next, I was admittedly taken back by his Billy Madison-esque response. The next step for this six time freshman was college.  Not only will he be doing his undergrad work next year, but he will be going to college with an eye on seminary afterward. I cannot recall a better example in my short lifetime of a person relegated by society as a failure accomplishing so much in 3 years towards reaching his full potential. He is the epitome of success for a school like St. James. 

Besao Part IV

It has been a few weeks since my last blog. The reason is that Besao has been abuzz for the past 2 weeks due to a group of Korean college students visiting. I traveled with them on their hike to a remote village within Besao’s Municipality. Besao is a huge Municipality by area. Some places in Besao take over 3 hours to reach by car or jeepney. Their leader, Rev. Peter Choi, was extremely nice and it was a pleasure to share a couple of laughs with some fellow travelers. 

The past few weeks for me have been a blast. I have continued to teach soccer to the students during their PE period. Soccer has been nothing short of a phenomenon in Besao recently. Every moment the weather allows there are kids playing soccer on St. James’ field. Even when I show up at the beginning of the school day, there are 4 sticks in the ground representing the goals from the pre- 8am pick-up game (A game that I have never either played in or actually witnessed). Next week will be our interest meeting, yet they are already having student-led practices this weekend. Like I said in my previous blog some of these kids are scary good. I am almost glad I will be leaving in late July, because if I stay much longer than that my students will surpass my skill level in soccer. A friendly against Sagada (Besao’s neighboring municipality) has already been scheduled, and they were kind enough to squeeze it in for before I leave.

I would love to tell you more about each and every kid that has amazed me with their talent and ability to improve, but I can’t. There probably aren’t many other results when you google Besao soccer, and I don’t want to give Sagada a scouting report.