This piece was lifted from the NCAA archive. The Year was 1975. 50 years since the NCAA was established, this article describes the rivalry that is – Ateneo vs. La Salle, The Blue Eagles against the Green Archers. For the De La Salle and Ateneo fans, students, community and Alumni, thank you for supporting us and enjoy reading.
Blue and Green, don’t the produce a great combination? Oh- yes – especially when Blue means Ateneo and Green is La Salle’s namesake.
At the Araneta coliseum recently high-octaned action turned into explosive consternation as the La Salle Green Archers spotted a three-point margin amidst a deafening uproar of protest from the Ateneo crowd, 94-91.
In so far as the scoreboard and the non-Ateneans were concerned, the score could not be otherwise; for the second consecutive years, the deadly arrows of the taft-based archers had pierced the Blue Eagles’ unguarded heels.
“So what?” asked one Ateneo fan. “We’ll get them some other time.”
This rivalry between Ateneo and La Salle stemmed 50 years back when the seed of the NCAA first started to germinate.
“It all started as a rivalry in the field of academic excellence,” recalls one NCAA observer. “Inevitably it spread into sports.”
This explanation sounds shallow because it really is.
Actually it is the unending lectures by priests-teachers to their students about the virtue of being loyal to one’s alma mater that built up the school spirit of the NCAA goers.
These loyalties go as far as defending with their fists when necessary; the brawls that often follow the games outside the coliseum are as classic as the encounters inside the hoopla.
As the years showered the NCAA with enough charm to be courted by a crowd of admirers, it has become apparent that La Salle and Ateneo have turned fanatics.
For how would one explain the presence of coeds in a match between what are supposed to be exclusive boys’ schools? Or the presence of a man aged sixty-six in a coliseum peopled by students aged six and above.
Not only that, the old man can chant his school’s cheers as if he graduated from college only a year ago.
That is college spirit for you; it lingers with the years – like the paper planes that rained the coliseum.
No, the sixty year olds did not make the flying objects – it could be a scheme of a sixty year old lad.
But who cares? Only the La Sallites do. For the Ateneans, it was a day the memory of which should be forgotten and buried.
Inboundpass.com would like to thank the NCAA and the San Beda College Library for this article.
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