HE Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrhaman Al-Thani, president of Qatar Basketball Federation, graced the grand opening of Western Union Cup 2012 of PIBAQ.
DOHA: No less than HE Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrhaman Al-Thani, president of Qatar Basketball Federation, graced the grand opening of Western Union Cup 2012, presented by McDonald's Qatar & powered by Alicafe of Pinoy Basketball Qatar (PIBAQ) on Friday at Al Gharafa Multi-Purpose Gym.
PIBAQ officials said the presence of Sheikh Saoud as guest of honour made the 11th basketball tournament more significant considering that this has been the biggest opening event so far in the history of the Filipino tournament.
“This is very important to us and we hope that this would signal with the closer partnership between us and QBF,” said Pat Carido, PIBAQ chairman.
It was the first time that Sheikh Saoud attended the PIBAQ opening since it was organized in 2005. He extended to the 23 teams participating in this year’s tournament the best of luck and wishes for exciting ballgames.
Other VIPs who came to attend the opening programme were Philippine Labour Attache Violeta Illescas, McDonald’s Qatar Assistant General Manager Firoz Mayladan, Ahmad Ali-AlMawlawi, QBF secretary general, Khamis Al-Sherain, QBF board member, Dr Moustafa Diab, technical expert at QBF and Ali Al Khayat, QBF executive director.
The parade of pretty women who were muses of different teams made the opening program more colourful and livelier as thousands of fans started to fill up the basketball court.
Winning the “Best Muse” from Division A is from August Sports Tailor team while Stephanie from Exxova team took the award for Division B. Angel Mallari, team captain of Team Creations and Concept, received the award for “Best in Uniform” in Division A while Pilipinas Dukhan (IMCO Engineering) won the same award for Division B.
Carido and Bombet Vitor, PIBAQ league manager, handed down a replica of a one-way Doha-Manila plane ticket for any distressed Overseas Filipino Workers wanting to go home.
At the opening of games, defending champion KIA Motors-Mindoro Tamaraws trounced Powerhorse Energy Drink, 79-72, but no after a good fight being showed by the losing team in the dying minutes of the game.
At the Division B, Panalphina/Dolphins took an upset victory against defending champion KBAS/Transfast, 68-54.
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