A JOB WELL DONE FOR ASAPHIL

(L-R) Danny Francisco, ASAPHIL President - Jean Henri Lhuillier, ISF President - Don Porter

The International Softball Federation (ISF) definitely had a very successful convention last Oct. 24th to the 25th at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel in Manila, Philippines with a lot of positive results from the 3-day event.

In fact it was a record turnout of member countries as 83 nations from 5 regions of the world were represented in the gathering, the biggest in the history of the Federation, and host organization the Amateur Softball Association of the Philippines (ASAPHIL), headed by sportsman-businessman Jean Henri Lhuillier as President certainly deserves credit for a job well done.

The event may have just been for a few days but as far as the ASAPHIL, and its secretary-general Danny Francisco was concerned, the preparation for the event took their organization months to put in place, with a lot of resources and manpower provided by Cebuana Lhuillier Pawnshop and Le Soleil de Boracay, two companies of Mr. Lhuillier which sponsored the event.

There were a thousand and one things to be done and last-minute details to be arranged prior to the Congress itself, but everything was delivered in the end to the satisfaction of ISF.

"It was certainly worth all our efforts as we saw the Congress delegates arriving one by one, and later on, working seriously with their respective groups and commissions, I believe the results can speak for themselves. For the Philippines, it was certainly a big honor for us to have been chosen as the host of this year's ISF Congress, it gave us the opportunity to showcase the Philippines to the rest of the world, at the same time, we were able to show once more our capabilities to host big international events as we have done in the past," said Lhuillier.

The event resulted to a lot of both pre-event and post event print, radio, and television media coverage as ASAPHIL left no stone unturned in making the event a well-publicized one in local newspapers, including two television news releases, and one where ISF president Don Porter and Lhuillier were interviewed in a highly popular sports talk show that was aired all the way to mainland USA.

At the pre-event press conference, Lhuillier cited the possibility of the Philippines making a bid to host a world softball championship in his country, after all, the Philippines is considered one of the major softball powers in this part of the world, in fact the Philippines won both the men's and women's softball championship at the 2005 South East Asia Games (SEAG), placed second to Japan in the Asian Men's Softball Championship, while the women's team finished in the top 4 in the 2007 Asian Women's championship.

Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Jose "Peping" Cojuangco was also a special guest at the welcome dinner tendered by Lhuillier for the ISF officials and delegates, while legislator and local softball patron Congressman Jack Duavit was the guest at the closing dinner, also sponsored by Lhuillier.

It was indeed a job well done for the host country.