Well, it's not really abandoned. It's more like in a state of unuse and halted development. For 10 years.
On Wednesday last week, I accompanied a colleague to walk around our school grounds as exercise. I haven't had cardio or a good hike in a while and that's why I decided to join her. After 5 pm, I changed into my leggings and we headed out towards the University Stadium. I work at a university situated in a mountainous area of the city. The stadium is located higher up in the mountains and getting there is an arduous climb. My colleague brought, Bela, her Siberian Husky dog and I had to walk her while climbing up toward the stadium. The dog was well-behaved and she made the climb more bearable.
In going to the stadium, we went off the bean path instead of the steep established road. It was an easier walk but my colleague feared that snakes might jump out of the grass. She asked me to walk ahead. Thankfully, there were only blackjack flowers that welcomed us and no wild animals.
After passing by the white Nursing building, I saw the stadium. This was my first time being in the stadium although it's been around for almost a decade. I was still a student back then when it was finished. For some reason, we were never able to make use of the stadium for school events. And it's been closed for many years. The school still maintains the grass but the rest of the stadium looks abandoned. An athletes' dormitory building on one side had been condemned. The lights had been blown away by the recent typhoon and haven't been fixed.
Employees can run around the oval and that's about the only use for the stadium. There are still no students coming to school for face-to-face classes and that's one of the reasons why the school admin has not put in more resources to utilize the stadium. But cases of COVID in the city are now consistently low and maybe once the students start coming back, the stadium will also be slowly revived and I can finally see it being used for grand sports events it was meant for.
📍 University Stadium, University of San Carlos, Cebu, Philippines
