Arnis de Mano

Arnis de Mano, the Filipino fighting art also known as Eskrima and Kali, was designated the National Sport of the Philippines by the Fourteenth Congress on June 30, 2007.

Since the Spanish conquest of the Philippine Islands, guerrilla fighters have fought the Spaniards, Americans, Japanese and even the national government. However, most practitioners of Arnis, or Eskrima, have been farmers training to protect their families and livestock with flails, machetes and other farm implements.

In the past century, the most important practice of Arnis has been in dueling, which is not uncommon here. Duels have often been fought with hardwood sticks, to reduce legal problems, yet some were fought with blades.

Today, men are more likely to carry knives to use them when tempers flare, so knife-fighting, and, to a lesser extent, machete fighting is a living ‘fighting art’ here.

Arnis, or Eskrima, has recently been practiced as a sport, although there isn’t yet much uniformity or standardization. The rules, and their corresponding effects on technique, haven’t yet been universally standardized, but several tournaments have been ‘fought’ with various sets of rules.

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Basketball

The unofficial national sport of the Philippines is basketball. Around 1900, the Y.M.C.A. introduced the newly-invented sport to the Philippines, and it’s now so popular among Filipinos that most villages have at least one basketball court.

The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) is Asia’s first -and the world’s second- professional basketball league, founded in 1975. It’s the most-watched basketball league and is the training ground for some Americans aspiring to the NBA. The Philippine Basketball League (PBL), is another, with many players who gain experience while hoping to be drafted into the PBA. A b

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Boxing

Boxing is popular on television in the Philippines. Gabriel “Flash” Elorde was one of the greatest Filipino boxers, along with featherweight Manuel Pacquiao and Mansueto Velasco, all world champions in their classes.

In March 2008, Manny Pacquiao (”Pacman”) took the super featherweight title in Las Vegas and became the first Asian to be a champion fighter in three weight divisions. He’ll be taking on Oscar de la Hoya this Saturday in Las Vegas (8 a.m. Sunday in the Philippines).

Amateur light flyweight Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco won a siver medal in the 1996 Olympic games. His brother, Roel Velasco, won a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics. p arksi public sma

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Billiardstb

Billiards is increasingly popular in the Philippines, and every city has plenty of pool halls frequented at many hours of the day and night.

Francisco Bustamante and Efren Reyes have been two of the world’s ten best billiard players. Robert “Superman” Gomez cinched second at the recent World Pool Championship.

Jose “Amang” Parica led the “Filipino Invasion” of the U.S. professional billiards scene. He was the 1997 World Player of the Year and the first player to shoot a perfect game of 1,000 points. He placed second in the 2005 U.S. Open.

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- Chesss by

In public parks of major cities one can find scores of avid chess players.n

Filipinos have gained international renown in chess; Eugene Torre became Asia’s first chess grand master and was the nation’s number one player for many years. He befriended Bobby Fischer, who eventually came to reside in the Philippines.

You may have heard of Wesley So (now 14 years old), who became the youngest Grandmaster in the world.—-thSip

Rogelio “Joey” Antonio, Junior is an International Grandmaster who was ranked second in the Philippines and 319 in the world in 2007. Recently, Torre and Antonio have been overtaken by Grandmaster Mark Paragua.

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Bowling

Olivia “Bong” Coo is the most be-medalled Filipino athlete of any sport, a 4-time World Champion bowler, the first Filipino athlete listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Rafael “Paeng” Nepomuceno won the World Cup four times from 1976 - 1996, won over 100 tournament titles and was the first man enshrined in the International Bowling Hall of Fame in Saint Louis, Missouri.

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Sipa

a Sipa (’kick’) was traditionally the Philippines’ national sport. The game is related to the modern game Sepak Takraw .

Two types of sipa games have been played. One is “sipa” and the other is “sipa lambatan,” the national game.

A child’s game of repeatedly kicking a “sapatilla” (rivet washer) plumped with papel de hapon is called “sipa,” while a game of kicking a rattan ball across a net is “sipa lambatan,” invented by the late Teodoro “Ka Doroy” Valencia in the 1940s.

The spherical Sipa ball was made of woven rattan strips with symmetrical holes, 10 cm diameter and about as light and bouncy as a tennis ball.

Simplified game (one-on-one, two-on-two or four-on-four): a set of rules determines penalty points (such as the ball bouncing twice on the ground). The two teams play against each other until a certain number of penalty points is accrued by one of the teams.

The ball should only be touched with the legs from below the knee to the tips of the toes. The Sipa ball can touch the ground, depending on the determined method of play.

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Sepak Takraw

‘Sepak’ is a Malay word for ‘kick’ and ‘Takraw’ is a Thai word for the ‘hand woven ball’ in the game. So the game is literally ‘kick ball.’

The letter ‘e ‘ is a ‘long e ‘ as in “me.”

The letter ‘a’ is pronounced “ah.”

So ‘Sepak Takraw’ is pronounced “SEE pahk TAHK rahw.”

Many variants of Takraw , that is, many indigineous games of kicking a rattan ball, have been played for hundreds of years throughout Asia.

In the Philippines, Sipa was the popular sport.

Malaysians played Sepak Raga .
In Singapore their game was also called Sepak Raga or Sepraga .

In Brunei, people played Sepak Raga Jala.

Thailand’s sport was Takraw (woven ball). In Burma Ching Loong was the popular sport.
Throughout Laos Kator was played, and in Indonesia Rago was the name of their game.

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History suggests that the various Takraw games evolved from an ancient exercise of Chinese soldiers who would keep a feathered shuttlecock airborne by kicking it back and forth between them.

As the Chinese game developed, the animal hide and chicken feathers were eventually replaced by woven rattan balls and the game was called Cuju, which means ‘kick ball’.

The sport was probably shared by traders and emigrés and became very popular in Malaysia and Thailand by the early 1400s. Also, Marco Polo reportedly brought Cuju back to Europe from China.

The Thais called the game Takraw (’ball’) and Malays called it sepak raga (’kick rattan ball’). It was played by men and boys gathered in a circle, kicking the ball back and forth between them.

The first versions of Takraw were not competition per se, but rather cooperative displays of skill exercising the body, improving dexterity and stretching limbs after long periods of standing, sitting or working.

The traditional circle game had no set rules, required very little space, and the ball was woven of rattan, which was abundant. Takraw provided villagers of all ages with exercise and community recreation.

The modern version of Takraw began taking shape in Thailand about 200 years ago. In 1829, Thailand’s sports authority drafted the first official rules of the game. Four years later, the Siam Sports Association introduced the volleyball-style net and held the first public game. Within a few years, Sepak Takraw was introduced to the physical education curriculum of Thai schools.

In 1945, Thais played an exhibition match in Penang, Malaysia, where Takraw was enthusiastically received, then the game spread like wildfire throughout Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

In 1960, representatives of various Southeast Asia nations met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to standardize Takraw, which had many variations throughout Asia, so that teams could play internationally.

The international sport was officially named Sepaktakraw after heated discussions between Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos and Thailand. A compromise decided that the word “sepak” - used in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia for “kick” would be combined with “takraw,” the Thai word for “woven ball.”

The various nations’ traditional Takraw games were distilled into
the international Sepak Takraw game of today with codification and adoption of standard rules of the game and regulations for the court and player clothing and officiating.