LigaIskolar Alumni Cup

By NIMROD NL QUIÑONES

It took me almost a year to get back into the pitch and play football once again, but I am glad I did it during the LigaIskolar Alumni Cup 2026 last May 9 at the Dynamic Herb Borromeo Stadium in Inayawan, Cebu City.

While I kept in touch with my team, UP Sportivo, in our group chat, I have always been listed as injured.

It was not an easy decision, but who can resist playing with fellow alumni and students, who are all part of the UP Cebu Football Community?

The requirement is a student number or being a UP employee. Mine from high school is 81-990. That means I got in on the year 1981, which was way before most of the players of the tournament were born.

Many of my teammates were students of a high school classmate of mine and are ten years or more younger than me.

This probably makes me a grand old man, but thanks to a college buddy, Tom Veloso of Benton United FC, he beats me in that category by a year. We are still hanging around to enjoy the game we played during our youth that may sound like several lifetimes ago.

Friends on and off the pitch and also at the dojo for over 40 years with my fellow Delta Bulldog Tom Veloso.

We might not be as fast and agile as we used to but we can still play and will do so as long as we can help our team.

My team had a good run in the eliminations after five matches, we accumulated four wins and a draw, which means we had 13 points. But we lost our last elimination round match to UP Sanguinis.

In the semifinals, we also lost by a hairline to the visiting team from UP Tacloban, which eventually won the title over Sanguinis in a championship match decided by a penalty shoot-out.

UP Tacloban won the men’s title via a shoot-out.

We fought for third place with Foobus, that means Football Buddies before you get it wrong, and managed to score a second victory for the day over the team that had a son of a college schoolmate playing as their center back.

A third place finish for us, UP Sportivo.

There was also a women’s division that was ruled by Lady Marmalade after edging the hard-fighting UP Tacloban lasses in the final match.

Lady Marmalade topped the women’s division.

Third place went to the Foobus women’s squad after slipping past the Iskas led by my good friend Tanya Chica.

Foobus was third in the women’s category.

Familiar faces, old friends, new acquaintances and much more made the day and the body ache worth it. It has been quite long and while this time, UP Sportivo might not have won gold after taking three straight titles, the team got more than that – we had a lot of fun.

To Atty. JL Escatron, Balong Antenor and the rest of the organizers of LigaIskolar, let us do it again soon.

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