First in a series

MANNY ?Pacman? Pacquiao has been making all the right moves in the boxing ring. When the time comes he has to move out of it, what should be his next best move?

Become a sports scientist, what else. Does this sound like a jab at the moon? Not to two sports scientists who have been keenly following Pacquiao?s ascendancy in his sport.

Filipino molecular biologist and sports scientist Custer Deocaris, based in Tsukuba University in Japan but currently in the Philippines under the Balik Scientist program of the Department of Science and Technology, and professor Angelita B. Cruz of the College of Human Kinetics at the University of the Philippines in Diliman urged the boxing hero to become a symbol that would herald the ?golden era of sports science in the country.?

Deocaris, who presented his publications on exercise during his Dec. 8 lecture ?Neurogenesis and the rewards of running: Can exercise make you smarter?? at the UP Institute of Chemistry, had returned to the Philippines to present results of his scientific team?s study on how exercise improves memory and learning.

Deocaris told the Inquirer that athletes had undergone optimum levels of neurogenesis (birth of new neurons) in their brains, which would make them ideal candidates for becoming scientists in their chosen sport.

His fellow scientists at the Institute of Health and Sports Science in Tsukuba University include former Olympians. Deocaris named one of the world?s top figure skater Akiyuki Kido, who retired in 2007 and decided to take up a PhD in Sports Science. According to him, Kido is now working on the neuroscience of stress response.

Sports scientists

Deocaris mentioned as current athletes-turned-sports scientists at Tsukuba University include a world aerobics champion, a silver medalist in rowing in 1994 Olympics in Greece, judo medalists, marathoners, sprinters, hurdlers and even cheerleaders.

Athletes who have spent a majority of their lifetimes honing their physical skills, sharpening their decision-making processes and undergoing extreme competitive pressures, possess the fastest reaction times and the most efficient decision-making competencies, Deocaris explained. Such athletes have brains that have become efficient transmitters of signals. They have also developed a positive mental state that motivates and exudes confidence?a factor that is needed in the field of science, particularly sports science.

Deocaris and Cruz stressed that an athlete is encouraged to become a ?sports scientist? because he or she is most qualified to impart knowledge to the next generation of athletes by virtue of his or her extensive experience in that particular sport.

If one would follow the academic curriculum, Pacquiao could only qualify as scientist if he finishes a BSc degree and later enter to graduate school to get an MSc, MD or a PhD.

Pacquiao?s business manager Eric Pineda told the Inquirer Science that Manny is currently a college freshman at the University of Notre Dame, General Santos City taking up Business Management.

It seems, right now, that being a sports scientist, or just a ?sports scientist? in the figurative sense of the word, is farthest from Pacquiao?s mind.