ON the day of your birth any topic in sports was right. Even a mimicry of the intramural games on campus, a village sportsfest or a nontitle fight in the ring seemed alright to write about.
In my old neighbourhood, the town folks celebrated birthdays with a serenade, hot chocolate and rice cakes at dawn, followed by a Mass at the nearby church and the raucous party at nightfall.
As the years rustle by like falling leaves, I remember point guard Sonny Jaworski, the perfect-book basketball player of our generation. With his temper and antics on the hard court, he kindled our imagination.
The Big J was hero-worshipped like a deity by star-struck fans in our sleepy town, where basketball, as in the rest of the nation, is our neighborhood sport and community pastime.
Forty summers ago, we played the game invented by Dr. James Naismith in our town plaza, where elders erected a makeshift wooden post fitted it with a custom-built ring. But the action was limited to a half-court arena.
We had a huge and deep swimming pool. It was the Cangaranan river where the waters were calm during summers, but unforgiving during the rainy season because of strong, rampaging currents.
All the barefoot boys were country kids. We never had running shoes when we burnt the cinder paths of the Valderrama Central School campus, competing for berths in the provincial athletic meet.
Getting chased was our track-and-field event. It was also parlayed in the native game of “Lantay-Lantay,” a satire of the more popular indigenous sport called, “Patintero,” once played in the Palaro.
Our biggest sport was the action-packed “sikyu,” a parody of American baseball, played with bamboo sticks on a grassy diamond. The fun lasted until dusk or when the rains drove us away.
Until the nets were sheared and the balls we busted, we played volleyball in our school’s grassy lot, where we also pitched white tents in summer during our annual scouting bivouacs.
We had, of course, our own basketball greats.
Our playing-coach was Toto Benil Rivero, a lawyer; the hotshot was Arnulfo Pido, a barangay officer; and the guard was the late Junior Yder, who was always donning the Big J’s No. 7 jersey.
The most famous athletic figure who made headlines was discus thrower Georgina Abrico, fondly called Nene George, who became a national champion. She cut quite a figure on the field. She was a finely chiselled charmer, and she had powerful legs and shoulders.
In the older version of the defunct Bureau of Public Schools Inter-Scholastics Athletic Meet, Nene George ruled both the women’s discus throw and shot put, unbeaten.
A woman of great concentration and will-power, she registered the national record of 33 feet, 10 and ½ inches in the discus. It stood unchallenged for a long time. Her feat in the forerunner of the Palarong Pambansa earned her a rare berth in the Philippine contingent to the 1958 Asian Games in Tokyo.
Ranged against the best of the region, Nene George found consolation by redeeming herself against Taiwanese rival Chen Shen Ying, who beat her for the gold medal in the Philippine Open.
Our heroine landed fourth behind Japan’s top 2 finishers, H. Uchida and O. Obanal and Taiwan’s Chuang Chun-Men, but beat Ying her Philippine Open tormentor, who finished fifth.
I live a few blocks away from our plaza. It no longer looks familiar.
Where in 1960s it was dirt and patches of grass that survived the scorching heat of summer, now it has a gleaming new creature. It is a multipurpose gymnasium, but no ordinary one.
It is covered with long-spanned roofs, so it is all-weather. Its centerpiece, of course, is a basketball court fitted with glass boards and retractable rings. Somewhere near the stands, the electronic scoreboard beckons with the name of the home team and the shot clock.
The night now owns our favorite game. The entire town plaza is ablaze with powerful LED bulbs. An inter-barangay tournament, played day and night, has just ended with a lot of fanfare and trimmings.
The players were garbed in fancy uniforms and imported shoes. Not only that. They were now taller and heftier—and, certainly more skillful. They can dribble better, fire treys from the perimeter faster, and leap higher, even dunking the ball with two hands.
It is a great privilege to celebrate a birthday in this technological age.