EJ Qua Hiansen l September 8, 2023 l Business World
In the wake of the FIBA World Cup, much has been made about the performance of Gilas Pilipinas, our national basketball team. I have seen chat groups where people say that we should stop investing so much in basketball and invest in other sports such as football where we have a better chance of winning but personally I do not think that it is a zero-sum game and I disagree that we should only fund sports where the Philippines can be competitive.
The last few years has seen the Philippines achieve so much in the sporting world beginning with Hidilyn Diaz winning our first Olympic Gold Medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and more recently seeing the Filipinas be the first Philippine football team in a FIFA World Cup. These achievements are truly worthy of recognition and have brought great pride to the nation as sports have the power to uplift, inspire and unify. We were all united in cheering for our country and that is why I believe that we need to invest in sports in general, in our athletes and in our sporting infrastructure. The purpose of sports is not to win but to use that competitiveness to drive ourselves to become the best versions of ourselves and we can replicate that on a national level.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) published a paper on the role of sports as a development tool. Within the paper, the transformational power of sport was highlighted citing the positive outcomes for individuals participating in sport including improved physical health, the impact sports have on psychological and emotional well being and the role of sports in healthy social development.
Going back to my initial point, we should invest in the sports which children are interested in playing be it basketball, football or even sports that have not even been invented yet, like quidditch. We can give our children exposure to different sports to explore where their interest lie because of the developmental aspect of sports and that develop should be the focus, not on winning. We should invest more in physical education programs because despite the importance, a study by the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education found that the marginalization of physical education is nearly universal.
Years ago, I was part of the local organizing committee for Peace One Day. Peace One Day is a global movement to have individuals play a football match to bring them together as a channel to unite through the One Day, One Goal initiative. These matches happened globally on the United Nations International Day of Peace with notable activities including matches between Israelis and Palestinians. Here in the Philippines, we gathered children from impoverished communities to teach them the game and to teach them to play with others. Some of the children we taught continued to stay involved in football and in fact, some of them are now licensed coaches that are giving back to their communities. Teaching them football for one day was not about teaching them how to win a football game but how to become better people that would enable them and their families to have better lives.
Personally, I was never a professional athlete but I do credit sports for the development of a lot of the soft skills that I utilize in my professional life. Along with my family, sports helped me develop the values that I carry with me today. I am also fortunate to consider many of my teammates to be among my closest friends. I hope that future generations will also have those same athletic opportunities and gain similar lessons themselves because instead of the athletic breakthroughs being the objective, it is the process of learning a sport that leads to breakthroughs in life.
*** EJ Qua Hiansen is the deputy group CFO of PHINMA Corp. and chairman of the Junior FINEX Committee of the FINEX Research & Development Foundation.