THE Manila Chooks TM will no longer participate in the 2021 Fiba 3×3 Lipik Challenger in Croatia.
Chooks 3×3 owner Ronald Mascariñas made the harsh and frustrating decision after the players—Chico Lanete, Mac Tallo, Zach Huang and Dennis Santos—didn’t receive their Croatian visas early enough to fly to Lipik, a town located in northeastern Croatia.
“There are things that we have no control of and this is one of them,” Mascariñas lamented. “Since 2019, this is the first time that we had to pull out from a Fiba 3×3 tournament and the players were really looking forward to it.”
Croatia doesn’t maintain an embassy in Manila, obliging the team management to send the players’ visa applications to Jakarta.
The visa applications were sent in earnest on May 7 but no visas were received as of Thursday.
Manila Chooks TM, which was supposed to compete in the qualifying draw, had been training hard for the tournament in a bubble set-up at the Lucena Convention Center in Quezon.
“The boys have been raring to bounce back after Doha but there are things that we couldn’t control,” Manila Chooks TM head trainer Aldin Ayo said. “Let’s move on and look forward to the next competition.”
The Manila Chooks TM will compete in domestic leagues, among them the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League, VisMin Super Cup and National Basketball League-Pilipinas.
Officials of the Chooks-to-Go Pilipinas 3×3, meanwhile, will begin planning for the first conference this year.
“We are looking to have a bigger tournament this year and our team is already looking at possible locations to host our first conference which will be the President’s Cup,” Mascariñas said.
“A lot will be at stake in the tournament, which will include slots in the 2021 Chooks-to-Go Fiba 3×3 Manila Masters,” added Mascariñas, who is also planning to stage another Super Quest this year.