Pacquiao urged: Be a sports scientist

By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

First in a series

MANNY “Pacman” Pacquiao has been making all the right moves in the boxing ring. When the time comes he has to move out of it, what should be his next best move?

Become a sports scientist, what else. Does this sound like a jab at the moon? Not to two sports scientists who have been keenly following Pacquiao’s ascendancy in his sport.

Filipino molecular biologist and sports scientist Custer Deocaris, based in Tsukuba University in Japan but currently in the Philippines under the Balik Scientist program of the Department of Science and Technology and professor Angelita B. Cruz of the College of Human Kinetics at the University of the Philippines in Diliman urged the boxing hero to become a symbol that would herald the “golden era of sports science in the country.”

Deocaris, who presented his publications on exercise during his Dec. 8 lecture “Neurogenesis and the rewards of running: Can exercise make you smarter?” at the UP Institute of Chemistry, had returned to the Philippines to present results of his scientific team’s study on how exercise improves memory and learning.

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