Basketball
All Out, All Heart, All Wet
The parade of athletes turned into the parade of umbrellas. Photo by Mimi Abesamis.
You know the UAAP Opening Ceremony is bad—really bad—if on Twitter, there were more positive reactions about the “portalet” installed by host school Ateneo for VIPs than the actual program itself.
Days before the event, sports headlines bannered the “Olympic-style” ceremony audiences may expect at the Marikina Sports Complex, which is hosting the UAAP Opening for the first time. This departure from tradition, according to Season 74 president Ricky Palou of Ateneo, was meant to give equal importance to all athletes of the UAAP games.
In previous UAAP opening ceremonies, only basketball players were accommodated in the parade of athletes at staple venue, Araneta Coliseum. The decision to put the spotlight on UAAP’s unsung and rarely televised heroes was admirable, considering that the host school is the league’s basketball powerhouse.
This magnanimity also forced Ateneo to hold the program outdoors in the middle of July, when the country is whipped by the rainy season.
The project’s branding—that it would compare itself to the Olympics, the supreme sports event—generated enough hype for people to raise their expectations. At least two hours before the start of the program, “UAAP Opening” was the world’s sixth trending topic on Twitter.
That host Bianca Gonzalez posted a photo on Twitter of a relatively luxurious-looking portalet, one with an aircon, only fuelled anticipation of just how much Ateneo was willing to shell out for the extravaganza. Gonzalez’s tweet, in fact, was re-tweeted by her followers more than a hundred times.
Unfortunately, the weather was uncooperative. When the first few minutes of the special event aired on TV, the damage it caused and continued to cause to the opening ceremony was immediately discernible: the field had pools of water, the stage looked soaked, and people were hidden by their umbrellas.
By the time the Ateneo Boys’ Choir sang the invocation, their wet hair plastered flat on their heads, I knew it was time to let go of Olympic-proportion expectations and really ponder on Season 74’s theme: All Out, All Heart.
This picture of a "sosyal" portalet from the UAAP opening, posted by Bianca Gonzales on Twitter, seemed to garner more positive reactions than the show itself.
The affair had a brief moment of stately elegance (understandably, it is hard to stay composed when you’re practically showering on national television) when Ateneo’s Corps of Cadets brought out a huge Philippines flag and paraded it on the field.
A male host helpfully explained: you may be maroon, blue, yellow, white, red, green and gold but we are all representatives of the country’s blue, red and yellow colors. I’m not sure if the league’s black recruits considered this racist.
During the national anthem, performed by Ateneo Chamber Singers and Ateneo College Glee Club, the TV would switch between the live coverage and an AVP of an actor playing Jose Rizal. This intermittent exchange muddled the story that the video was attempting to show and which would eventually be lost on viewers: So what was that?
Lost and confused
On an elevated platform onstage, the drummers of the Blue Babble Battalion took the spotlight. At the Araneta Coliseum, they can be very intimidating, especially when your basketball team is down by a few points while the BBB starts hammering its signature chant, “One Big Fight.”
At the Marikina Sports Complex, you appreciate… the showmanship. Responding to the heartbeat displayed at the huge LCD on stage by repeating its sound, the drummers were an introduction to the reportedly 165-strong Babbles band that had overtaken the field.
Here’s when Studio 23’s camera work—infamously sloppy particularly during cheerdance competition—becomes as clueless as the TV viewers. It zooms in the cheerleaders, and then cuts to the trumpeters and drummers. It was extremely difficult to understand what was going on and get a big picture of what was happening in the stadium, unless, there was in fact, nothing happening.
The rains caused more than a few problems for Ateneo performers. Photo by Karl de Leon.
The wall onstage split open, and Spongecola began performing Puso, originally composed for the Ateneo Blue Eagles basketball team for the 71st UAAP season. It’s a beautiful and inspiring song, one that eschews the importance of money, trainings abroad, or a hard-court floor imported from an NBA All-Star game in favor of grit and heart.
Then dancers with white flags suddenly appeared, waving white flags, and looking lost and wet. I am hard-pressed for reasons as to why their laudable efforts have a point.
After the commercial break, there was the requisite introduction of the UAAP board members and university presidents. Father Jose Ramon Villarin, the Ateneo president, reiterated the message of the theme: “This is more than a simple tournament; the games are more than just games. We know the greatest enemy we face is not our opponent but someone from within our very selves.”
The parade of athletes then began, starting with the four founding members of the UAAP—University of the Philippines, National University, University of Santo Tomas and Far Eastern University.
The rest followed: University of the East, Adamson University, De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila. As in the Olympics, this part was boring, especially since no discernibly famous personalities made it as team muses. Not even school mascots were present and one wonders just how much the rain changed event plans.
It’s also interesting that for a league that hopes to de-emphasize basketball, the male announcer kept dishing out basketball-related trivia as schools entered the stadium. (“UP last won in 1986;” “FEU’s Arwind Santos is now a dominant force in the PBA;” “UE produced Paul Artadi and James Yap.”) The time would have been better spent if they told us which sports, other than basketball, these schools dominate in and which athletes have won in the Asian or SEA Games.
Rounding off the occasion was the torch relay that showed the flame being passed on from school to school, before ending up with Olsen Racela, another basketball reference. I was hoping the lighting of the cauldron would finally live up to the Olympic hype, but alas, it wasn’t breathtaking unless you’ve never seen an elevator.
Poorly planned fireworks were then set off at 5.30 p.m., when the sun was still out, and thus, barely registered itself in the camera, although we did see billows of smoke.
Opening ceremonies of the Olympics have a story—with a succession of dioramas, we learn of Greek history; with the brush of a pen, we get a glimpse of Chinese culture. Past UAAP Opening Ceremonies did the same: colorful performances that depict the history of Philippines games, and narratives of friendship and sportsmanship that helped formed the league. There is no such storytelling in this year’s UAAP Opening and for that, it lost its heart. However, thanks to the rain, the performers did show that they have spirit.
