By ERWIN MASCARIÑAS
Correspondent .
A COMPETITION among 13 dragon boat rowing teams from across the country will be the highlight of the Butuan City’s Balangay Festival tomorrow, the 5th year of the “Bugsay Balangay, the Bugsay Mindanao: Paddle for Peace.”
Fr. Saturnino Urios University vice president Rev. Fr. Chito Butardo, who came up with the idea of forming Caraga’s first dragon boat team back in July of 2012, expressed his optimism on the success of the event.
“This year, the city of Butuan through the city sports committee, has embraced Bugsay Balangay as an official event of this year’s Balangay Festival celebration in cooperation with FSUU. This is a very apt event as Balangay is a celebration of our roots as paddlers in the past,” said Butardo.
Butardo pointed out that the annual competition on Agusan River is meant to raise people’s awareness for the preservation of the river, the country’s third largest water basin in the country.
“From a very few teams in 2012, we now have more than two dozen of teams paddling in different bodies of water all over Mindanao. Slowly, it has become a mainstream sport in Mindanao. There are still emerging teams that will come to fore in the coming years,” he said.
Butardo said the Balangay boat reconnects the people of Butuan to their own historical pride and “paddling through dragon boating intensifies our sense of identity as a people endowed with the mighty Agusan River.”
He said the sport reminds people to take care of the waterways.
“Agusan River tells stories of how we as a people are connected by this body of water. With the local government embracing this sport, we foresee the communities by the bank of the river to be enticed to go into these sports. Agusan River can be the playground of communities,” Butardo said.
According to the event secretariat, about 13 teams from different parts of the Philippines would compete tomorrow at the Philippine Ports Authority grounds along the Agusan River.
Cromwell Nortega, council member and chairman of the city sports committee, said, “The city government, through the leadership of our mayor, Engr. Ronnie Vicente Lagnada, pushes its unwavering support for this year’s Bugsay Mindanao Paddle for Peace in the hopes of bringing more color to this year’s Balangay Festival to promote Butuan’s tourism attractiveness and showcase the competitiveness among Butuanons in the field of sports. As Bugsay Mindanao is dubbed Paddle for Peace, this is also to show the city’s commitment to peace for our region and for the world,” said Nortega.
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