GENERAL SANTOS CITY (GenSan), home to world champion boxers Manny Pacquiao and Nonito Donaire, Jr., will host the Philippine National Youth Games, or Batang Pinoy, unfolding Oct. 25 to 30 this year.
“When we see the smiles in the faces of the athletes and we see them get selected for a chance to make the national team in the future, that’s when we can say the Batang Pinoy succeeded,” said Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chair Richard Bachmann during Tuesday’s Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex.
Open to in and out-of-school youth athletes aged 17 years old and below, the week-long will have more than 10,000 participants competing in 27 sports disciplines including boxing where the country produced champions in Messrs. Pacquiao and Donaire.
It will also have in the competition calendar gymnastics and weightlifting where the country produced Olympic gold medalists Carlos Yulo, who snared two mints in Paris last year, and Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo, who delivered the country’s breakthrough gold in the quadrennial event in Tokyo four years ago.
Athletics, swimming, arnis, badminton, 3×3 basketball, chess, cycling, dancesports, futsal, jiu-jitsu, judo, kickboxing, karate, muay, pencak silat, sepak takraw, soft tennis, lawn tennis, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball, wrestling and wushu are the other sports.
Also gracing the event launch were PSC officials Dindin Urquiaga, Rachel Dumuk, Caroline Tobias, Gloria Quintos and Roselle Destura. — Joey Villar