EVSU Ormoc hosts inter-campus sports, cultural competition

All is set for the EVSUlympics 2013 happening today at the Ormoc campus of Eastern Visayas State University (EVSU) until Aug. 30. The inter-campus sports and cultural competition carries the theme “Bringing the Torch of Hope, Peace and Unity through Culture and Sports.”

Participating in the three-day intramurals are the main campus in Tacloban as well as the four other satellite campuses of EVSU in Burauen, Carigara, Dulag and Tanauan towns. Participants and athletes will vie for four cultural events (literary and musical, dance sport, cheer dance, Mr. & Ms. Evsulympics) and 13 sports tournaments.

The sports tournaments are basketball (men and women), volleyball (M&W), table tenis (M&W), lawn tennis (M&W), badminton (M&W), taekwondo (M&W), track and field (M&W), chess (M&W), baseball, softball, soccer, swimming and sepak takraw. This is the first time for the Ormoc campus to host the EVSUlympics since its creation in July 1997. It was supposed to play host last year but the Ormoc campus didn’t had the facilities. Preparations this year was also late because the adminsitration had to prioritize the construction of a two-storey medical and dental clinic and the purchase of its facilities worth P995,000 taken from the students’ trust fund.

Only when Dr. Rolando Musca assumed the campus directorship last June 13 did physical preparations for the intramurals begin. He rolled out more than P1 million for the construction of a stage, basketball court, food court, drainage system and pathway. Of that amount, P125,000 came from the other campuses that contribute P25,000 yearly for the EVSUlympics. For the stage construction, the graduates of batch 2011-12 contributed P332,000 while the Parents Teachers Associations of the Technology and Education Departments pitched in P200,000. The rest of the expenses came from the administrative fund.

The P1 million is aside from the P200,000 cost of holding the event. These construction activities are the biggest single development of EVSU-Ormoc in its 16-year existence. The six campuses take turns in hosting the EVSUlympics and it will take five more years for EVSU-Ormoc to host again. On the duration of his term until 2015, Musca would like to leave legacies to the school (directors are given two years to administer a campus on rotation basis). This early, he won the commitment of Sen. Antonio Triallanes IV for a two-storey building for the technology department.

Musca would also like to build a three-storey building for the education department, an audio-visual hall for seminars, symposiums and forums and a new volleyball court (and convert the existing volleyball into a tennis court). He also wants to build a swimming pool and soccer field at the Ormoc campus’ unutilized 5.2-hectare land in Alta Vista 6.465 kms. away. In the short term, Musca plans to borrow money from Land Bank of the Philippines to purchase a school bus to be used by their engineering students who attend classes at a two-hectare site in Luna also owned by the Ormoc campus. Its distance of more than eight kilometers from downtown necessitates a transport facility of which Musca plans to charge P600 to engineering students per semester to be included in their tuition.