The UP Fighting Maroons have gone farther than ever before to gear up for the upcoming UAAP season this year. As far as the Joe Abunassar Impact Basketball Training Camp in Las Vegas, in fact.

Led by Coach Aboy Castro, the UP Fighting Maroons underwent an intensive talent-enhancement program from May 24 to June 5 at the US training center. The training trip for the UP Men’s basketball team was sponsored by the UP Alumni Association, Inc. (UPAA), which has been working to give the UP men’s basketball team a much-needed boost through a long-term, sustainable basketball program. Other major sponsors of the UP Fighting Maroons’ training camp program are Accel, FilOil, Handyman, Pharex B, Kenny Rogers and Eastern Telecommunications Philippines.

The Joe Abunassar Impact Basketball Training Camp, founded by world-renowned basketball coach and “trainer to the pros” Joe Abunassar, is a premier destination for teams, professionals, and student athletes all over the world looking to improve their athleticism, strength, and basketball skills through the Impact Training System. It consists of perfor-mance training and high-intensity basketball skill development. Several NBA players have been honing their skills in the Joe Abunassar training camp, including Kevin Garnett, Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince, Al Harrington, Baron Davis, and Jermaine O’Neil.

Elastic bands were used to provide resistance to the players’ legs
and torsos in order to hone their strength.

“The objectives of the training were four-fold,” Coach Castro said. “The first was training, in order to make sure we are able to get the training skills-wise, particularly for the shooters, the postmen and defense. The second was conditioning; we knew the training would really kick our conditioning a couple of notches higher.”

The third objective was team-bonding. “We were together for two and a half weeks, just us in a place we’ve never been to, especially together, and we had to rely on just ourselves to literally get by,” said Castro, describing the team’s experience of living together in one house (which was loaned to them by a UP alumnus), doing the laundry, grocery-shopping, and cleaning after themselves. “Iba yung samahan namin just because of that experience we went through.

The fourth objective was to expand the minds and horizons of the individual members of the team. “As young 17 to 20-year-olds, it’s a different experience training abroad, especially in the US. And for a lot of them, it was really an eye-opener.” In the training camp, the UP Fighting Maroons found themselves talking to, observing, and practicing right alongside NBA veterans such as Al Harrington of the New York Knicks, Austin Daye of the Detroit Pistons, and Rudy Gay of the Memphis Grizzlies. “For an 18-year-old player from UP to get a chance to work side by side with Rudy Gay, who might be in the World Championships this year, learning from his work ethic—that’s a unique experience. The modeling our players got [from these NBA athletes] is one thing I think will really stand out and help us this season.”

Besides the NBA pros, the training camp has also served as premier training destination of Philippine basketball teams such as Talk ‘n Text Tropang Texters (as the first Filipino team to go there, Talk ‘n Text has been going to the training camp for the last seven years), the Philippine national team with Coach Castro in 2007, and the basketball teams from other Philippine universities such as Ateneo de Manila and San Beda, which have been attending training camp for the last four or five years. “You can see the effect of the training on these two teams, which is why they are always in the championships,” Castro said.

For two and a half weeks, the UP Fighting Maroons undertook a rigorous daily routine of training, conditioning and team-playing almost as soon as they arrived in Las Vegas. “We had to wake up at about 6:30 to 7:00, get to the camp [a ten-minute drive from their house] at 8:00, then do skills-training from 8:00 to 10:00. We rested for around five to 10 minutes, then did weight-lifting from 10:00 to 11:00. We’d go home for lunch, catch a quick nap, then get back to camp by 4:00 for team dynamics. So basically, it was three sessions a day,” Coach Castro added. “In the morning it was skills-training then conditioning, or vice versa. In the afternoon, we either played a game or honed our team skills.”

Players practice their moves in the water, with elastic bands and
weights, for two hours a stretch.

Many of the skills-training and conditioning activities the team received at the training camp were things they have never done before, according to Coach Castro. Elastic bands were used to provide resistance to the players’ legs and torsos in order to hone their strength; foam rollers were used for muscle “regeneration.” The players even practiced their moves inside a swimming pool while wearing elastic resistance bands and weighted medicine balls, an especially arduous exercise that the players did for two hours a stretch.

The team dynamics sessions consisted of actual games on court. “We played three games, all with legitimate Division One players from Georgetown, Kentucky or Kansas, and we won 3-0 in that series,” Coach Castro relates. “It was a really good opportunity for us. Some UP alumni even came to watch our games, and sometimes they brought food.” The games, in particular, were a treat for the UP alumni in the area. “It was the first time we brought the UP team there,” Coach Castro said. He is especially appreciative of the support given by former UPAA President Ponciano Rivera, and UP alumni in Las Vegas and Los Angeles Danny and Josie Bautista, and Tor and Linda Bautista, who hosted the team.

Coach Castro, a BS Chemical Engineering graduate of the UP College of Engineering who worked as assistant Coach of the Coca-Cola team and was on the National Team from 2005-2007, is more than satisfied with the training the UP Fighting Maroons received this year. And the results are already showing. “This year is the first time we brought the whole team to the Philippine Basketball League. It used to be that we would send out only one or a few players to different teams. This year, we brought the entire team, along with the coaching staff, and we managed to enter the finals this year.”

In accordance with Coach Castro’s personal philosophy of establishing all individual rewards as inseparable from team rewards, the individual team members have also come out of the training program changed for the better. “When we discussed the experience among the team, [the members] said the reason why hindi bumigay yung isa sa kanila when they all wanted to—they were all exhausted—was because wala pang bumibigay,” Coach Castro proudly relates. That kind of cohesiveness and team unity, developed and enhanced by the team’s experiences, will be a real strength to the team when the games begin.

“So in terms of recruitment, individual development, team-training, and team competition, the results are all positive. As a UP Maroons’ program, we have never trained this way before,” says Coach Castro, adding, “There’s a strong likelihood that we will continue this from now on.”