Youths Have a Ball on Philippine Trip

Larry Corbi Jr. was apprehensive about taking the trip to the Philippines, where his family is from. “I thought it was going to be, like, a bore,” said the 18-year-old Los Angeles native. It was anything but.

The Eagle Rock High School graduate played basketball almost daily against Filipinos, and he learned about poverty, humidity and bicultural friendships. He returned from the two-week August visit with several scholarship and contract offers to play basketball and volleyball there.

Every summer for the past three years, Filipino-American teen-agers like Corbi have visited the Philippines through an exchange program organized by the Fil-Am Youth Sports Foundation, a Westlake group that runs basketball leagues for Los Angeles youths. The Los Angeles team plays Filipino teams and members get to know the country of their ancestry.

“These kids grow up here--they’re Americans,” Abe Pagtama, a Fil-Am organizer, said of the Filipino-American teens. “All they know are American hot dogs and hamburgers. This trip is to show them their roots.”

In turn, a youth basketball team from the Philippines visits Los Angeles each spring.

The Los Angeles players stay in Manila and play youth teams from throughout the Philippines, Pagtama said. The teen-agers also play a game or two against semi-professional Filipino teams.

But the deepest impressions left on the Americans were the poverty and turbulent political situation.

“Every time you (went) somewhere, you had to stay together because there were stories that if you’re a foreigner, they might kidnap you for money,” said Pagtama’s 15-year-old son, Gabe.

“We played in the barrios too and the whole town would come to watch us. . . . The one bad thing over there is the mosquitoes. We had to make small fires in the hotel rooms to drive them out.”

The visitors also enjoyed celebrity status, with television and radio coverage. “I’m 6-foot-1 and everyone said, ‘Dang, how’d you get so tall?’ ” Gabe Pagtama said. The St. Monica High School sophomore received offers from several colleges. Corbi, a Cal State Northridge freshman who was a multi-sport standout at Eagle Rock High, received offers too. Both are debating whether to accept any of them.

“I worry about living alone (in the Philippines) and the big culture shock,” Corbi said. “I’ve talked to a lot of people and they say, ‘It’s a great opportunity,’ but if they were in my predicament, I think they’d think twice too.”