Panama's sports scene: highlights of 2003

Let me first say that when talking about Panamanian sports in 2003, The Panama News gave sporadic coverage because we don’t have the group of regular contributors that a good community newspaper should have. We didn’t make it to all of the cayuco races. We didn’t make it to any of the American football games. Many important sporting events didn’t get listed in our calendar. A lot of athletes and events were slighted and that’s a shame. You can help us begin to right that wrong by sending us information about events to come, summaries, results and photos of events that have happened, and maybe even contributing an article now and then.

But enough of this talking about ourselves. This is about Panamanian sports in 2003.

The best-known Panamanian athlete is Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, and the best results for any national team came in baseball. At both the intermediate Little League and men’s levels, Panama came in second in the world championships. (But when will baseball have a REAL world championship, something like soccer’s World Cup or Olympic basketball, in which Mariano Rivera will pitch for Panama?)

For the first time, a Panamanian soccer team made it to a world championship tournament. True, the under-20 team lost three straight games by one goal, displaying anemic offense and coming home from the United Arab Emirates sooner than we would have liked. But they weren’t humiliated and just being there was an impressive accomplishment for coach Gary Stempel and his team of overachievers. Scouts from professional teams around the world took notice of some of these youngsters, and there is a very good chance that a soccer program somewhere else will take advantage of Stempel’s talent and his frustration in dealing with Panama’s national federation, and recruit him away to greener pastures. Meanwhile, our under-23 team did well enough in 2003 to keep its chances of going to the Athens Olympics alive. Our “major” national team was less impressive, but Panamanian women’s soccer assumed a higher profile in 2003.

Boxing was mostly disappointing. Santiago Samaniego and Luis Andrés Pineda lost title bouts, and the only Panamanian world champion we had was in women’s boxing, the ferocious Ana Pascal. However, Miguel Callist was deprived of a title shot by a perverse series of events throughout the year and will get his chance in short order, and Roberto “La Araña” Vásquez may be in a position to fight for a world title by the end of 2004 if he keeps winning.

In cayuco racing 2003 was the 50th anniversary of the Ocean-to-Ocean Race and a lot of Zonians came back to the isthmus for the occasion. John Husum, Sue Stabler, Pablo Prieto, the Shriners and all the rest of the folks who work so hard to put on this event just about reached the limit to the growth they could handle, but meanwhile a fourth event was added to the season, a Gatun Lake race sponsored by the Hotel Melia. In the main three-day race through the canal, the male category winner was Chava, captained by Tito Stabler; while Rio Teta, led by Stevie Bodden won the female class; Deception, with Christine Kelso leading, won in the mixed category; and the open and overall winner --- by just a second over Chava --- was Sudden Impact, led by Jay Gibson.

We only sent 37 athletes and too many “dignitaries” to the Pan-American Games, and the whole process was accompanied by the usual disgraceful power struggles between INDE and the Panamanian Olympic Committee. Swimmer Eileen Coparropa brought home a bronze medal in the 50-meter freestyle, and Panama got another bronze from fencer Jessica Jiménez. Those were all the medals we won.

Panama’s athletic scene was and is much broader than has been mentioned above, and we have a bunch of athletes playing at various levels of various sports abroad. With a little help from the fans and participants, we hope to do a better job of covering this important part of our culture in 2004.

sports

Baseball, soccer top RP sports in 2003