Bohol Coconuts: Not Just for Athletes

Why the Activity Program Was Built for the Whole Barangay

Lerma Moore has a way of making a simple idea sound inevitable in hindsight.

“Sports will always be the heart of what we do,” the Bohol Coconuts General Manager said. “But a heart needs a whole body around it to actually work. That is what our Activities program is. It is the rest of the body.”

It is the kind of line that sounds like a mission statement, because it is. When the Bohol Coconuts Baseball and Softball Club was being built from the ground up, the founders made a deliberate decision that most youth sports organizations never bother making: they designed the club for people who have no interest in baseball at all.

The result is an Activities program that reads less like a sports club calendar and more like a community cultural center — date nights for couples, casino nights for adults looking for social energy, cinema screenings for children who may never pick up a bat.

Academic contests that celebrate the classroom alongside the diamond, and the centerpiece event that has already captured imaginations before the club has even officially opened its doors: the Cambanac Olympics.

It is a deliberate philosophy, and it starts at the top.

In most youth sports organizations, the programming decision tree is fairly predictable. You build the athletic structure first. You add some social events around the edges. You call it community.

The Bohol Coconuts flipped that model.

“We knew from the beginning that if we only served athletes, we would only serve a fraction of the barangay,” Lerma said.

“There are kids in Cambanac who will never be baseball players. There are parents who work hard all week and just want a night out with their spouse. There are families who want to be part of something exciting in their community but have no connection to sports. We want all of them. Every single one of them.”

That conviction shaped the entire Activities architecture. The program is not an afterthought to the baseball academy. It is a parallel track — equally developed, equally intentional, and in many ways, the more accessible entry point for the broader community the club is trying to serve.

Consider the adult programming. The Bohol Coconuts Activities calendar includes date nights — structured social evenings designed specifically for couples in the community.

In a barangay where organized adult social life can be limited and the daily grind of work and family rarely leaves room for deliberate connection, this is not a small thing.

“I think people underestimate how much parents and couples need something that is just for them,” Lerma said. “Not for their kids. Not for their job. Just for them, together. We want to be the place that gives them that.”

Casino nights sit alongside the date nights on the adult calendar — evenings of games, social energy, and the kind of lighthearted competition that does not require athletic training or a team jersey. The goal is consistent across all of it: lower the barrier to belonging.

“You do not need to know what a curveball is to enjoy a casino night at the Bohol Coconuts,” Lerma said with a laugh. “You just need to want to be around good people and have a good time. That is an easy invitation to accept.”

For the youngest members of the community — the ones still years away from understanding what a batting average means — the Activities program offers something they understand immediately: movies.

Youth cinema screenings are a featured part of the Bohol Coconuts calendar, and the thinking behind them is both simple and quietly profound. A child who comes to a cinema night at the club develops a relationship with the club.

That relationship is real and warm and positive long before that child is old enough to join a Rookie League team. And for some children, the cinema night may always be the primary way they experience the Bohol Coconuts — and that is perfectly fine.

“We are not trying to turn every child into a student-athlete,” Lerma said. “We are trying to give every child a place where they feel like they matter.”

“A movie night does that. A fun evening with friends in a safe, welcoming environment does that. That is what we are building.”

The academic contests extend the same logic into the classroom. The Bohol Coconuts explicitly celebrates intellectual achievement alongside athletic achievement — a dual commitment that sends an unmistakable message to the community: this club is for your whole child, not just the parts of your child that can throw and catch.

And then there is the event that may ultimately define what the Bohol Coconuts Activities program is capable of producing at scale.

The Cambanac Olympics.

The name alone carries weight. It is not the Bohol Coconuts Invitational. It is not the Club Championship. It is named for the barangay itself — a declaration, in event form, that this competition belongs to the community, not just the club.

“The Cambanac Olympics is one of my favorite things we have planned,” Lerma said. “It is bigger than baseball. It is bigger than softball. It is the whole community competing together, celebrating together, being proud of where they come from together.”

“When I think about what the Bohol Coconuts can mean to this barangay five years from now, the Cambanac Olympics is one of the images I see.”

The concept invites broad participation by design. Events will not be limited to club members or registered athletes. The goal is to bring the barangay together under a shared competitive spirit — the kind of event that generates stories people tell for years.

“We want grandparents watching their grandchildren compete,” Lerma said. “We want neighbors cheering for neighbors. We want the whole barangay to feel like the Cambanac Olympics is theirs. Because it is.”

Taken together, the Activities program spans a range that very few sports organizations attempt to cover.

What makes the Bohol Coconuts Activities program structurally distinct is not any single event. It is the underlying philosophy that produced all of them simultaneously — the insistence that a sports club’s value to a community should not be measured only by how many players it develops, but by how many people it genuinely serves.

The club’s Services framework reinforces this at every level. The soup kitchen provides nutritious affordable meals. The mini food store offers below-market groceries to local households.

Membership pricing — 30 pesos per month for youth, 50 for adults, 100 for a family of up to five — keeps the door financially open for families across every economic circumstance in the barangay.

“Everything we do is connected,” Lerma said. “The baseball training and the casino night and the cinema screening and the soup kitchen — they are all the same idea. They are all saying: you belong here. Whatever brings you through the door, you belong here.”

The Activities program is still pre-launch. Coach Merv returns to Bohol next month, the intern staff comes on board, and the calendar begins filling in real time. The date nights will get dates. The cinema screenings will get films. The Cambanac Olympics will begin to take its full shape.

For Lerma, the anticipation is personal.

“I grew up in this community. I know what it means to have something to look forward to, something that is yours, something that makes you proud of where you live,” she said.

“That is what I want every person in Cambanac to feel when they think about the Bohol Coconuts. Not just the athletes. Everyone.”

The baseball academy will develop players. The softball program will build champions. The kickball leagues will give young children their first taste of team competition. All of that is real, and all of that matters.

But on casino night, when the couples are laughing around the tables, and on cinema night, when the kids are settled in their seats eyes wide at the screen, and on the day the Cambanac Olympics opens for the first time with a whole barangay gathered to compete and cheer — on those days, the Bohol Coconuts will be something larger than a sports club.

That, Lerma Moore will tell you, was always the point.