PSL impacts swimming in the Philippines

The Philippine Swim League (PSL) got a big boost in its grassroots development program when it was appointed national university sports association for colleges and universities by the Federation of School Sports Associations of the Philippines (FESSAP) last year.
FESSAP is the Philippines representative of the International Federation of Universities (FISU), which has the sole right to hold the biennial University Games or Universiade, the Olympics for schools and universities, with 166 member countries sending their best student players every two years.
With the next Universiade to be held in Kazan, Russia in July this year, PSL started screening a national pool of swimmers through national trials last year and will soon put the selected swimmers on an intensive training program to form the national team.
The new development completes the structure of the PSL, which now has the full status of a national sports association mandated to promote the sport of swimming on the grassroots, club and school level and train national student athletes for international competition.
On the intermediate level, its mandate includes training young swimmers to become elementary, high school and university/college swimmers, thus giving serious swimmers, particularly the less privileged, a chance to gain swimming scholarships in some of the best schools here and even abroad.
PSL has been entrusted by the Philippines Department of Education with the function of holding the swimming competitions of the Palarong Pambansa. The Private Schools Athletic Association had also invited the PSL to officiate its swimming competitions last year.
PSL is thus on an even keel with its counterpart PhilSwimming, Inc. both as a national sports association affiliated with a national sports federation (FESSAP) and an international sports federation (FISU) and as a duly incorporated organsation which has the juridical personality, like any other sports association, to engage in sports activities in the Philippines.
It doesn't intend to rival PhilSwimming, which is a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee and the Olympic movement. The POC in turn is a member of the International Olympic Committee, which has the sole authority to hold the Olympic Games, the IOC affiliates the Southeast Asian Games Federation Council which holds the Southeast Asian Games, and the Olympic Council Asia, which oversees the Asian Games.
While the PSL does not at the moment have the logistics to undertake a huge program, its President, Susan Papa, believes, the "journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step."
It started by doing what it does best training coaches and organising competitions. It organised the Philippine Swimming Coaches Association, providing the impetus for the expansion of a network of coaches, both in terms of quality and quantity, believing coaching is at the heart of an effective training program for young swimmers. PSL itself boasts of a group of qualified coaches, certified by the World Swimming Coaches Association, who are ready to train students, on a temporary basis, upon request of schools until they hire a permanent coaching staff.
PSL has volunteered its national coaches to train over 2,000 students under the school curriculum of the Diliman Preparatory School headed by former Senator Nikki Coseteng. As part of its outreach program, the has also trained street children housed in the Centre for Community Transformation and trained out-of-school youth under the Champs for Joy program of Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte. Other schools on the grassroots level have been recipients of the PSLtraining program through the mayors, governors and congressmen and others in the local government units.
On the international level, clubs in the ASEAN region have invited PSL to compete in their tournaments. In China, the highest-ranked officials of the Chinese government invited PSL to

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