IT’S the off-season. Many regard this period as down time, a period of inactivity, the blahs. But no.
Just like in the cyclical turn of our universe, the off-season corresponds to winter, when everything sleeps, is dormant, inactive or cold. Or so it seems.
Actually, things are happening underfoot. There is movement, but most of it is unseen. There are events, but not everyone can see or is invited to the party. What happens is developmental—germination, gestation, and eventually, maturation.
The fans may not see it, but this period is probably the most frenetic of all. It is like the time of darkest night before the dawn breaks through. Or the death of winter that suddenly stirs into spring.
I’ll quote a graf in one of my favorite books Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles & Celebrations by Donna Henes which might as well describe exactly what’s happening in the sports world when the off-season eases into the pre-season.
“The life that has stayed hidden, in exile or underground, during the long deep sleep of the season now shifts and starts to stir. Poking and peeking, it seeks the surface. Space. Air. Light. Stretching skyward, bulbs, shoots and buds burst forth from the earth, exploding open, exposing their tender green growth. The sweet sap rises.”
And soon there will be overt frenzy anew, just like what’s happening in the earth. “The birth waters break. The skies open. It rains, it pours, it mists. The defrosting sodden soil teems, churns with every creepy-crawly thing that ever slithered out of a swamp. Hordes of birds descend….Animals awaken from their pregnant hibernations….Birds and beasts set out on a concerted feeding frenzy, gorging themselves and their ravenous, insatiable mouths-ever-open offspring.”
And so we have pre-season basketball tournaments such as the Father Edgar Martin Basketball Invitational Tournament or the Father Martin Cup, Milcu Sports Basketball, City Hoops and the most celebrated—the Filoil Flying V Preseason Cup where the San Beda Red Lions and the National University Bullpups emerged as the 2019 senior and junior champions, respectively.
Apart from team building sojourns whose main goal is to create and seal chemistry among team members, collegiate teams have also taken to joining camps abroad to hone their skills and pick up new tricks, if not to strengthen and condition their bods to prepare for the expected banging and bruising when the season starts. Some of the favorite camps to visit are Impact Basketball Camp in Las Vegas headed by Founder-Director Joe Abunassar who is famous for having trained players like Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups, among others. Training is said to combine weights, skills training, five-on-five games and specialty work. And the results, say devotees and the founder-director himself, speak for themselves.
Greece, which teems with basketball camps, is another training destination in the off-season. The UAAP champion Ateneo Blue Eagles went there last year and is doing a repeat this year. Head Coach Tab Baldwin described last year’s training in Greece as a series of “very, very tough games” where the Eagles played the Greek under-21 national team twice and five other A2 teams which apparently placed them notches above the competition in mind, body and spirit.
Serbia is another off-season mecca for basketball teams, with the University of the Philippines Fighting Maroons going to Novo Sad last year to undergo boot camp training with intensive drills and sessions with players from different Serbian ball clubs.
Or else teams join tournaments abroad to test their wings, gain added confidence and toughen themselves to a different level for the season proper. Last year, the De La Salle Green Archers joined the Buddha’s Light International Association (BLIA) Cup University Basketball Tournament in Taiwan. This year the UP Fighting Maroons are in the same boat, competing against teams from Taiwan, China, New Zealand and Canada.
Between now and the opening of Season 82 of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), the eight teams will be doing a combination of boot camp training, tournaments and some serious R&R to put everything together.
Until finally, it is spring. The quiet, understated winter will be a thing of the past. The time will be ripe to peep out of the earth to unfurl the wings that stayed carefully folded for quite some time. Time to take off the wraps and put the goods and talents in full display.
“In order to go somewhere, you got to go through something,” a good pastor once eulogized at the funeral of United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
The off-season is that crucible through which the dreams of glory of the coming season are born and refined. It’s not a boring, dead season after all. It is potent, mysterious and dangerous.