BJ Imperial

BY KIRBY G. JALANDONI

BJ IMPERIAL (4 BS ME) didn’t grow up playing basketball on his village courts like most Filipino kids. He wasn’t one to spend his weekends on the soccer field, nor did he swim or hit the badminton court like many others. Instead, at age 13, he began to play ice hockey—which was still an informal sport in the Philippines when BJ began playing.

It isn’t a surprise that ice hockey in the country was still in its nascent stages as early as eight years ago. After all, a tropical country like the Philippines isn’t exactly known for its excellence in the world’s most popular winter sport. Back in 2012, the entire community consisted of less than 40 people.

Nowadays, that number is in the hundreds. The Federation of Ice Hockey League, the local governing body of the sport, is now recognized by the International Ice Hockey Federation. The men’s team, which used to be a makeshift team of players who simply knew how to play, is now a competitive pool of 40 to 50 players vying for a spot in one of the region’s best ice hockey squads.

The sport’s rapid growth in the country would have been impossible without BJ—one of the key cogs in the program since the squad’s first tournament. All it took for BJ to begin playing the seldom seen sport came from two not-so-seldom sources of inspiration: Movies and family.

Humble beginnings

BJ first fell in love with the sport after watching The Mighty Ducks (1992), a Disney comedy film about a youth league hockey team. However, BJ couldn’t begin playing the sport as a kid because there were no rinks in Bicol, where he grew up. Instead, BJ’s hockey roots came from his days playing on gravel roads using rollerblades with his cousins.

“We had this driveway in front of our house and [my cousins] started playing street hockey there,” BJ recounts. “When I was around five years old, I asked if I could join them.”

When BJ moved to Metro Manila for high school, he was finally able to hone his skills on the ice because there were two rinks in the area. The transition from street to ice was seamless. “Since I started off with rollerblades and a stick and ball, I didn’t have a hard time with coordination and moving my feet while handling [the puck].”

By 2017, he was one of the more experienced players in the country’s small ice hockey community. As such, when the official national teams were formed, BJ was named as one of the inaugural members of the Philippines Men’s Ice Hockey Team for their debut in the 2017 Asian Winter Games.

For flag and country

The team’s first-international match came against Kyrgyzstan—an Asian ice hockey juggernaut. Right from the get-go, the difference in competition was staggering. The physicality of the Kyrgyzstani players, some of whom played semi-pro in Russia, was no match for BJ and his fellow debutant teammates.

“We weren’t really used to playing this international level of hockey where every time someone holds the puck, [the opponents] are out there to hit you,” BJ narrates. “We were just falling all over the ice.” ing the score to as close as 5-7. The comeback was sparked by BJ, who made history as the scorer of the Philippines Men’s Ice Hockey Team’s first-ever goal.

The team eventually lost the match 5-10, but proceeded to win the rest of their games en route to a bronze-medal finish. BJ’s experience in his debut tournament proved to be the stepping stone for future success. By 2020, he had already won multiple medals in various tournaments, highlighted by the instrumental roles he played in the team’s 2017 and 2019 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games triumphs.

Amidst all these tournaments, BJ still had to manage his responsibilities as a management engineering student. Navigating the course as a national team athlete was taxing, to say the least. During tournament season, he would train from Sunday to Thursday all the way in Pasay City and often arrive home past 1:00 AM.

Because of this demanding schedule, he missed out on many college activities and had less time to study than the typical student. Even so, BJ holds no regrets, understanding the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to represent the country playing the sport he loves.

35 “There were so many times I could have backed out of a tournament like the SEA Games to work, let’s say, on [thesis],” he says. “But for me, I knew which was more worth it. There’s no space to be regretting things.” BJ