Fair Play: When teachers get the whistle

I SAID in a previous column there was something fundamentally wrong with how the Department of Education ran their meets.

Graeme Mackinnon, a veteran of many Deparment of Education meets, who is now back in Australia, gladly points out that fundamental mistake—the teachers.

Incompetent officials have been the bane of many coaches like Graeme, athletes and parents. These officials are teachers.

Graeme e-mailed, “Hahahaha! Do you really believe that DepEd will look into their officiating at the Cviraa? It is all about being in the ‘Boys club’ and earning points for promotion… So why would these officials want outsiders to come in and show them up by doing a good job of officiating. What’s the point in that, if they miss out on their brownie points? That is why the
officiating is kept in-house.”

No. I don’t expect DepEd to change its way, but since I still dream of meeting Maria Sharapova or of writing about the Philippines’ first Olympic gold…

Getting teachers as officials won’t be that much of a problem for sports where fouls are as easy as determining whether or not a player runs out of his lane, but for sports like basketball and football?

Teachers are not good with the whistle and incompetent officials breed disasters.

The despicable conduct of the parents of the University of San Carlos basketball team was partly because of DepEd’s refusal to get the best officials available.

In 2005, I got a tip to investigate these “promotion points.” I was told this was a reason coaches cheat in DepEd meets. I tried asking a few, nobody talked. I forgot about it.

In 2006, when news that a college freshman got to play in elementary baseball hit the national dailies, I read secretary Jesli Lapus blame DepEd’s culture of cheating on these “promotion points.”

Now these same points are the cause of this incompetence?

I hope, aside from condemning the parents’ actions, DepEd’s Vivian Ginete will also condemn the conduct of their officials.

But, as Graeme said, “It is now six years since I left Cebu and it seems, as far as the Cviraa is concerned, things are as (ab)normal as they were then. In my normal (some from DepEd would say abnormal) way I have trodden on the DepEd football officialdom’s toes on many occasions.”

“It doesn’t get you anywhere because these people don’t have the interests of the athletes at heart, only their own…

It is a fact the quality of the athletes are getting better every year. But the individual sport organizer and officials remain stagnant.”

PARENTS’ THREAT. I learned that the parents of the USC elementary basketball team threatened to sue the reporters, and even drag them to the DSWD for the stories and pictures regarding their brutish conduct in the Cviraa.

Pictures of their sons, they say, should have been blurred, like what the news section does.

One father even bragged that his lawyer was already calling him, waiting for the “attack signal.”

Oh, gee. I hope they won’t rectify a mistake, with another mistake.

If they think I’m wrong, go to DSWD then. Ask why the faces weren’t blurred, since they, and their principal, have suddenly become experts in journalism.

By the way, they may think that they got the upperhand in that pseudo press con because the reporters didn’t answer their attacks.

Well, as a rule, if an idiot claims he can turn lead into gold and calls a press conference to announce that, reporters just jot down notes and write what he claims.

But in private, they add that to their lists of 10 of the most stupid things they hear

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