The Philippine Badminton Association will organize the first-ever Philippine Intercollegiate Badminton Championships that will serve as a preseason tournament for the upcoming seasons of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines and National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Co-presented by Smart Communications with support from the MVP Sports Foundation, the tourney would be held from 10 to 11 September at the Centro Atletico in Cubao, Quezon City.
There will be five divisions: Men’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles.
The champions will bag P50,000 while the second placers will get P20,000. Two third placers will be awarded P10,000 each and medals.
Since it is the inaugurals, organizers have agreed to waive the registration fee for all participating schools.
Project director Imee Moreno said they want to give student-athletes an avenue to gauge their preparation heading into the collegiate wars.
“The main objective of this tournament is to give another avenue for our athletes at our collegiate level,” Moreno, also a Cagayan de Oro City councilor, said in a news briefing.
“As we all know here in the Philippines there are very few avenues that can serve as their training ground.”
Also attending the announcement were PBAD secretary general Christopher Quimpo, PBAD vice president Jude Turcuato, and Smart first vice president for Go-To-Market Melvin Nubla.
The league is targeting eight competing universities and colleges but has yet to divulge which schools will participate.
The organizers, however, claimed that most teams from the UAAP have already verbally committed.
Smart said it will continue to partner with PBAD in promoting badminton, this time entering collegiate levels, after the Philippines’ hosting of the 2022 Badminton Asia Championships last April.
“Smart is here to support the initiatives of PBAD especially since we already started with Badminton Asia a few months ago,” Nubla said.
“With the opening of the classes also happening, we decided to really work with PBAD to have a preseason badminton tournament.”