ILOILO City and Iloilo province will serve as hosts for the Visayas leg of the 2019 Batang Pinoy slated on Feb. 23 to March 2, the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) announced.
PSC chairman William Ramirez said the city and province of Iloilo have signed an agreement with them to host the Visayas qualifiers for the Batang Pinoy National Finals last October.
Tagum City, Davao del Norte, meanwhile, will host the Mindanao leg qualifiers from Feb. 2 to 9, while Ilagan, Isabela has been tapped to oversee the Luzon qualifying leg slated from March 16 to 23.
“When we assumed office, we would like to stop it and focus on the Palarong Pambansa but there were negative reaction na dapat ipagpatuloy ‘to to complement the Palarong Pambansa,” said Ramirez.
Among the sports to be played in the qualifying legs are archery, arnis, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball, boxing, chess, dancesport, futsal, karatedo, lawn tennis, pencak silat, sepak takraw, softball, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball and beach volleyball.
Sports that will no longer hold qualifying legs and will be played in the national finals outright are cycling, gymnastics, judo, muay, rugby football, triathlon, weightlifting, wrestling and wushu.
“We are one with the PSC that the highway to development of producing gold medals and a healthy citizenry is really to go down to the grassroots level. We see the Batang Pinoy as the opportunity to realize this,” Ramirez said./PN
