In the early 70s until around the mid-1990s, Baguio City had a healthy football program with many football clubs representing the big high schools and colleges in Baguio and La Trinidad—even the seminaries, I kid you not!
Those bible-quoting, devil-hating, Gregorian chanting young aspiring priests from the Recoletos Seminary in Asin Road, who seem like they couldn’t hurt a fly in their pristine white robes, could actually kick a mean penalty shot or tackle an attacking forward like he was lucifer.
The Philippine Military Academy (PMA) in Fort del Pilar had the strongest offensive team--and why not those cadets eat roadwork for breakfast, running 10 or 15 kilometers every morning for WARM UP.
Then there’s the hardy squad from Brent International School who, I remember, had the best uniforms and gear (all shipped from the States, I presume ) and they even had a bulldog for a mascot.
No, not a costume-playing clown—a real mutt that chewed on any wayward soccer ball that came his way.
Those three clubs were perennially dominant in the penant race on any year. I think it’s no coincidence that those clubs happen to have their own football fields.
But then emerged the dark horses with no football fields of their own but only had the Melvin Jones football field to practice on, but still managed to achieve top-calibre playing skills.
One of those clubs was fielded by Baguio City High School (BCHS), soccer champions of the Ilocos Region Athletic Association (IRAA) Meet in '78. It was skippered by Jimmy Eslao who I'm pretty sure MUST BE an unacknowledged son of Brazilian football god Pelé. He HAS to be, to be playing like he did.
When Jimmy ran the ball from one end of the field to the opposite end, you'd think the ball was TIED to his feet. Nothing disrupted his dribble, and he drove all defenders mad with his switchbacks and turn fakes. The only thing you can do to stop him really is to whack him in the face, or throw dirt in his eyes...anything as desperate as that. Otherwise, it's "Goooooooaaaaal....!" score one more for Jimmy, the Magician.
This team had a legendary goalkeeper, Samuel “Sammy” Torres, and stellar players like centerfield Marvin Concha, leftwing striker Eric Bajada and stocky pint-sized attacking FULLBACK (!) Rizal Eslao, Jimmy’s kid brother, who bore an early resemblance to Argentine icon Diego Maradona.
Benguet State University—still known then as Mountain State Agricultural College (MSAC)—were the most feared defensive squad. They had an all-Cordilleran lineup and employed a tireless "run-and-gun" defensive method.
As soon as you received a pass, their fullbacks chased you down like maniacs. They don't tackle you because they figure if you fall down you get to rest. So they let you do your fancy foot dribbling all you want--they just don't let you PASS the ball until you collapsed out of exhaustion. In contrast, each MSAC man was like the Energizer bunny that just kept going…and going…and going…
Even they were candid about their “trade secret”—you can’t beat this camote-powered team, they said.
PMA team captain Cadet Ariel (shucks! I forget his surname) once said, “The MSAC team don’t really beat you…they just wear you down to death!”
This was in the early 70s, before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
How do I know? Because I date the existence of one of the best expatriate soccer teams in Baguio by these historical milestones. During Shah Pahlavi’s reign (think of the guy as Iran’s version of Ferdinand Marcos) the Iranian government sent out thousands of its young men on state scholarships to study in some of the best West-oriented countries (the shah was a modernist) and for some reason the Philippines was one of their favorite destinations. So we had as many Iranian students in Baguio in the 70s as we have South Koreans today.
And those Iranian boys can sure play football—in fact, they’re about the only team that was seeded high enough by oddsmakers to beat PMA, which they did back-to-back in ‘77 and ’78--as a wild card guest foreign team.
To be fair, PMA handled the ball better, and kept ball possession almost 75% of the time. These boys from the "long grey line" also executed their set plays from cornerkicks much sharper, they had more shots on goal from all ranges.
But Team Iran had a formidable goalkeeper, Mahmad, who did not concede a single goal in the league’s Finals for two seasons. Too bad when the Ayatollah Khomeini deposed the Shah of Iran in 1979, many of those Iranian students were recalled back to their home country. Some of them were probably drafted into the Iranian Republican Guard and were sent off as canon fodder in the protracted Iran-Iraq war. God, I hope they all made it safely through those tumultuous days.
There were also other ex-pat “football families” who lived in Baguio back in the day. The most notable of them that I remember were the Lichnochs from West Germany.
Anton Lichnoch and his brother Fritz were mainstays of the Brent Bulldogs. But outside of school, they were really the ones who pioneered the league that played weekend football friendly games at Melvin Jones Football Grounds which attracted huge crowds of Baguio residents and tourists every Sunday.
Best of all, the Lichnochs schooled our local players in the intricacies of the "offside rules"--a very tricky aspect of football that few amateur players understood.
You've gotta have at least one defensive player between an attacker and the goalkeeper at all times, except inside the penalty box. Otherwise, an opponent's forward player might just as well pitch camp in front of your goal waiting for a long pass--and that will ruin the game. (In basketball, they call it the "three second" rule, you're not allowed to stand longer than 3 seconds under the basket).
Years of watching quality PROPER football in Melvin Jones field eventually schooled many Baguio spectators, too. Soon even dummies like me slowly learned to appreciate the beauty of a "passing game" and why after 90 minutes of each half a SINGLE GOAL still makes all that time spent watching a low-scoring game worthwhile!
That's how Melvin Jones football ground played a role in the sports education of Baguio's youth. So the city government maintained the grounds really good, back in the day. "Bravo!" shoutout to former Mayor Ernesto H. Bueno. He really took care of Melvin Jones, and was a patron of local football. A retired PAF pilot, General Bueno used to always drag the invincible Philippine Air Force team up to Baguio to test the mettle of our local clubs. But even the Airmen fell victims to Team Iran in a friendly match at Melvin Jones during the summer of '77.
I miss those halcyon days when Burnham Park guards would not even allow people to cross the football field—you had to walk around the field by the perimeter to get from the old scalloped Melvin Jones grandstand to Burnham Lake.
During games, players could safely tackle each other without worries—there was not one piece of rock or even pebble in the entire football pitch! The native Baguio grass (I’m not sure about the particular strain—it wasn’t Bermuda grass, nor coarse crab grass) was thick and dense and was regularly mowed by the city with a “riding type” of lawn mower.
The grass was so well-maintained that on weekdays, the field could fit three baseball diamonds—with room to spare. And so schoolchildren from BCHS, Baguio Chinese Patriotic School, Baguio Central School and other public schools nearby would play simultaneous games—and argue among themselves which baseball was hit from which homeplate. So, yeah, TWO kinds of games were played on that field if the footballers are not around--baseball and BOXING.
All this fun came to a halt when the July 16, 1990 Killer Quake struck. For several weeks—three or four months if I recall correctly—Melvin Jones being the largest open field in the city served as an evacuation “tent city” for thousands of Baguio quake survivors.
Long after the tent cities packed up, the damaged turf never regained its once pristine greenery. It marked the downspiralling decline of local football—you can’t convince anyone to play football there now. Those two white steel goalposts are still there though, a mute testimony to the once-flourishing football tradition in Baguio City. Maybe the obvious decay is what started the careless and fatalistic policy now of just allowing any earth-gouging activity that comes to mind since, anyway, “the grass is ruined already.”
If the city decided to turn that thing into a payparking lot one of these days, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Maybe that will be the cue to make even the most nostalgic and sentimental Baguio boy or Baguio girl think of finally leaving Baguio.
Everytime you pour cement on a patch of Baguio soil no matter how small, you chip a tiny little bit more out of its soul. You will end up with a petrified Baguio City, where every bit of its natural substance has been replaced by artifice. Just like petrified wood that only LOOKS like wood, but has really become cold, hard stone to the core.*
