The Office of Sports Development (OSD) has finished all preparations and is now set to back all athletes who will don the jerseys of Green-and-White. Down by only 20 points in last year’s UAAP General Championship, the La Salle armada is now off to come back to grab its first General Championship (GC).
OSD Director Nong Calanog is trying to picture all the possibilities in the coming 75th season of the UAAP. He explains that he wants everything to run smoothly.
“We were behind only by 20 points last season and going into the last few events, we were actually still in the running [for the over-all championship],” Mr. Calanog said.
“With the new recruits of our coaches this year we’ll be able to strengthen those teams that did not fair very well or almost made it so we could actually recover those 20 points we needed to overcome the lead of UST last year,” he added.
In the long run
OSD director Calanog shares that his office will stick to its purpose, which is to support student-athletes.
He highlights, “One is organization;
we’re trying to see what type of organization will best serve all our constituents so we’re trying to look on our current organization if there is something we can do to make things more efficient.”
“Second is if we need additional people, meaning if we want to succeed and we need to twist the organization a little bit to serve the athletes better [and] do we need additional people to fill in those additional areas – particular in sports psychology as an important part of preparing our athletes,” said Calanong.
Mission and Vision
As the new academic year fires up, the OSD has formulated a concrete Mission-Vision guided by the beliefs of the University and the Office of Student Affairs, which OSD is directly under. The OSD Mission-Vision states:
We are at the forefront of developments in the field of collegiate sports providing holistic LaSallian formation to student-athletes, integrating faith-faith life, leadership and community engagement towards nation building.
Status of the change of phase
With less than six months experience in handling the OSD, Calanog explained, “My transition to OSD rather than the transition in the program because as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Reyes did a very good job in putting in those in organization.”
The new director said that what is left in the transition part is his own self.
“The transition is really mainly on me, it’s really for me trying to [catch up] because I came from a high school setting [LSGH].”
