Believe it or not, Derek Ramsay once suited up for a Letran basketball team.
The Kapuso actor shared that prior to his arrival in the Philippines way back, he played football. But he found here that the sport wasn’t that popular with Filipino sport enthusiasts at the time, so he tried his hand at the sport that was – and still is – basketball.
He saw action in small leagues in Greenmeadows in Pasig City where former Letran Knight and PBA legend Samboy Lim was participating and quickly, he asked Ramsay to try his luck with the Toyota Otis-Letran Knights in the Philippine Basketball League (PBL).
And Ramsay gladly answered the call.
“Actually, I’m a football player. So when I came here in the Philippines, football wasn’t so big so I picked up basketball and played in a league in Greenmeadows and Samboy Lim was there,” Ramsay shared on ‘Rise Up Stronger: The Road to NCAA Season 96’ on Tuesday
“Samboy was impressed with how I played and he asked me to attend a tryout in Letran since at the time, they’re planning to form a team for the PBL.”
Ramsay, now 44, was accepted, suiting up alongside Letran’s Ronjay Enrile and Aaron Aban during the 2004 PBL season, where they finished third.
“I consider myself more of an athlete than an artist,” he stressed.
“That’s my true love. I've been playing competitive sports ever since I was a child, football, rugby, water polo, almost all sports.”
Ramsay also shared that being a sportsman-slash-actor was not all glamour and prestige.
“It was really hard,” said Ramsay, now engaged to actress and model Ellen Adarna.
“The sleepless nights were no joke. That's the most important thing, if you train hard, you need the rest even more and during that time, I was a lot younger.”
And while he is now much more accomplished as an actor than an athlete, he wants his son, Austin, to continue his passion. In fact, Ramsay shared that Austin has the skills and body of an athlete and he wants him to develop it further.
“He's not a big kid but he's very strong for his size like he's beating kids older than him at arm wrestling. He's very very quick,” Ramsay said.
“Now I try to guide him into sports because he's into Esports, he loves playing his computer games and I really don't want to take that from him but with that said, I want to balance all of that.”
Watch 'Rise Up Stronger: The Road to NCAA Season 96' every weekday (2:45 p.m.) Saturdays (4:30 p.m), and Sundays (5:05 p.m.) on GTV!
—Bea Micaller/JMB, GMA News
