United States Sports Academy President and CEO Dr. T.J. Rosandich will participate in the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) virtual National Sports Summit, an event that will bring together hundreds of sports educators, athletes, coaches, coordinators, national sports associations, and other stakeholders for online conference sessions tackling 25 sport-related topics.
This edition of the National Sports Summit was originally scheduled to be held in Manila in February 2020 but was postponed to begin virtually this week on 26 January due to the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Rosandich will present on the first night of sessions with a lecture on “Sports Success from a First World Perspective.”
The presentation includes an overview of the evolution of the sport industry with the focus being that of the United States although there will be periodic mention of other geographical areas such as Europe in the context of global competitions, e.g., Olympics. The historical approach outlines the “Performance Pyramid” characterizing a national feeder system for sport came to be in the United States. This approach underscores the fact that developing sports structures is an evolutionary process – one that takes time to realize its’ full potential. The presentation will then segue into a discussion of the Performance Pyramid within the United States with both a “global” overview in terms of sport participation followed by a discussion of the practical effect of the pyramid as it relates to one specific sport; in this instance, athletics (track and field). Other topics include public policy related to sport, governance, gender, youth sports, and trends in sports participation particularly with onset of COVID and the impact that it has had and will likely will have into the future.
The program will also include remarks from Philippine Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go, Senate Chair on Sports; and Cong. Yul Servo Nieto, House Chair on Sports. It will also feature remarks from Remarks from PSC Chairman William Ramirez and will be emceed by Professor Henry Daut.
According to Philippine media reports, the first National Sports Summit was held in 1992, where 38 resolutions were crafted in the hopes of a better national sports environment. Data collected from the conference sessions will be studied and used as the foundation for a new set of resolutions that the PSC hopes will be of use to the country’s sports leaders, legislators, and national officials in the future.
The Academy has a long history in the Republic of the Philippines. Rosandich participated as an official observer at the 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the country, invited by the PSC. The Academy has an agreement with the PSC to enhance the national sport effort in the island nation. The agreement marked the return of the Academy’s international sports education programs to the Republic of the Philippines, where it taught certification programs in the early 1980s.
Founded more than 45 years ago, the Academy has delivered quality sport education and service programs in 65 countries around the world. These have varied in scope from the full-charge conduct of a nation’s entire national sport effort to individual coaching clinics, seminars and symposia. As a not-for-profit, independent school of sport, the Academy has been able to provide a combination of expertise expected from a sports university combined with the experience gleaned from applying expertise in this field.
Clients of the Academy have included central sports organizations, (CSOs, such as ministries of youth and sports), national Olympic committees, ministries of education (for physical education and interscholastic sport programs) and sport associations and federations. Many of the details of this work can be found by visiting the Academy’s website at https://ussa.edu/international/
