Owing to the monumental achivements of Philippine basketball last year, the Gilas Pilipnas and Samahang Basketball ng Pilipinas and other sportsmen in the field emerged as top awardees in the Philippine Sportswriters (–foul word(s) removed–)ociation awards last night.
Photo credit: Spin.ph (Dante Peralta)
The Spain-bound Gilas Pilipinas players led by Jimmy Alapag, Jason Castro, Gabe Norwood and Jeff Chan, who finished second in the last Fiba Asia Championship in August and qualified our country in this year’s World cup, were hailed as Athletes of the year.
The SBP on the other hand was awarded as Natonal Sports (–foul word(s) removed–)ociation of the year while its Manny V. Pangilinan received the “Executive of the year” plum.
Other cagers that came out winners are PBA MVP Arwind Santos and NCAA reining MVP Raymond Almazan.
Basketball legend Caloy “The Big Difference” Loyzaga with longtime sports officials Frank Elizalde and Moying Martelino were also handed with lifetime achievement award by the PSA.
Meanwhile, Rubilen Amit, Dennis Orcollo and Lee Vann Corteza of world champions in billiards and taekwondo athlete Mikeala Calamba received President’s Award.
The PSA awards is hold to give honor to the outstanding sportsmen and (–foul word(s) removed–)ociation in the country annually. This year, a total of 123 personalities and entities were honored.