Lessons from the Kiwis

If New Zealand was able to do it through its four million citizens, the potential for us is much higher.

I just arrived from a trip to New Zealand with my wife, Eileen, as part of the Nacionalista Party’s annual team building with around 200 partymates through the generosity of our national president in former Sen. Manny Villar and our chairman in Sen. Cynthia Villar.

It was our first time to visit New Zealand and we were amazed at how nice and welcoming the Kiwis are to visitors. It is a country that values equality among its citizens and they are proud of that.

In fact, locals have been telling us a story about their former Prime Minister who was slapped with a fine after his motorcade was caught over-speeding. That’s how equality works there.

Also, sports play a vital role in the character-building of the Kiwis.

It is a country of only four million people and in its 108 years of participating in the Olympics, it already won 47 gold medals. Wow! That is amazing.

Life in New Zealand is conducive to raising prized athletes. Just imagine that at 5 p.m., all shops and offices are already closed and the kids still have the entire evening to play. Also, all of their communities have sports facilities, which are usually just a walking distance away from the residential areas.

Children get dismissed from school at around 3 p.m., giving them enough time to try sports at such an early age. That’s their way of “talent identification.” If a sport doesn’t inspire a child, they could easily move to other sports to try if they can excel.

And since sports facilities are readily available, children have a chance to try and excel until they become champions.

According to a local, as soon as a child learns how to run, the parents would immediately expose him to rugby.

I was surprised because rugby is a very physical sport. It is like American football, but without the pads. Thinking that a toddler is playing rugby really bothered me, but the local was quick to say that they are not allowed to hit or tackle hard.

They also have local tournaments or fun scrimmages every weekend, where they play “tag” rugby. Tag rugby is also a variation of the sport, but instead of tackling, they were only allowed to tag or touch each other before passing the ball to a teammate.

Boys, girls, moms and dads in different age categories participate in these weekend games that tighten the bond of the members of the community. No wonder, the country is now fighting for third place in the Rugby World Championships in Japan.

Rugby is not just part of their culture — it is also within their soul.

The passion of every Kiwi to cheer, support and even be present in the World Championships in Japan could be felt in the entire country. This love for the game was also the reason why the former Prime Minister got fined for speeding: He was rushing to catch the game of their national squad — The All Blacks.

If we look at the rich sports history of New Zealand, we cannot help but to feel jealous. What would it take to win the Philippines’ very first Olympic gold medal?

For me, there are only three things: focus, access and passion.

We need to focus on sports where we truly excel. We don’t need to focus on all 40 Olympic sports. We need to dominate only one or two sports. Maybe what the likes of Hidilyn Diaz, Manny Pacquiao, Onyok Velasco, and Carlos Yulo had achieved already gives us a clue of what sport we should focus on.

Then, we need to give our young athletes access to sports facilities within the communities.

We enjoin the national government, with the local government units and the private sector, to build those sports facilities nationwide. The more the better, as what we want is to allow all Filipinos the opportunity to try those sports where we can excel, which is basically our “talent identification” from a pool of 110 million citizens.

If New Zealand was able to do it through its four million citizens, our potential is much higher.

Once we start winning internationally and start bringing home success stories of our very own locally-trained athletes, with the help of media, then passion will come in.

And there won’t be anything that can stop us from winning our very first Olympic gold medal.