By: Jeffrey Gatdula
Photo by Eddieson Capitle, taken from his Facebook account.
By Carl Argarin
Colegio de San Juan de Letran’s Lakas Arriba Cheerleading team bagged 3rd place in the All Male Group stunts category of the 2018 Philippine National Cheer Grand Prix that was held at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, last June 3.
Eddieson Capitle, Martin Lozano, Arwin Peralta, Glen Pingaand Charlie Dela Pena represented LACT in the inaugural event.
The LACT was directly invited by the Philippine Cheer Union; the same organization that administrated the previous season of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Cheerleading competition.
According to Capitle, the squad was set to join both the Coed and All male divisions. However, with the squad losing several players due to graduation, the Intramuros-based dancers were forced to pass on the Coed division.
“We were planning to join both coed and all male. However, most of the team graduated and since it happened during vacation, we have limited members and ended up joining the All Male group stunts division only, composing of 5 senior malecheerleaders of the team,” Capitle bared.
By making their mark in the national cheerleading scene, Capitleand the squad hopes to further attract talented Letranites to join LACT.
“Actually, we joined the competition to help the team, especially for recruitment. We hope that after winning the competition, aspiring cheerleaders will try out for Letran,” he explained.
“In fact, during the competition, there are plenty of cheerleaders nationwide. We are hoping that we could scout some of them and bring them to our Colegio as part of the team,” he added.
A total of 37 teams joined the inaugural season including NCAA champs Arellano University and Central Colleges of the Philippines who snatched the Senior Coed Elite National Champion and the Open Coed Elite National Champion.