Philippines at the 2009 SEA Games

So far, the Philippine team had been training locally. It had made plans for national athletes for the 3 remaining months before the 2009 Southeast Asian Games. According to news reports, the Philippine national team lacked funding from the government but still hoped to achieve a good training program for its athletes. Harry Angping, the PSC Chairman, wanted to send the country's athletes to China, a world sports superpower, to have an intensive training which could boost the skills of the athletes, especially members of the Philippine volleyball, diving, shooting, cycling and weightlifting teams.

The country looked after its gold and silver medallists at the latest SEAG, which was held in 2007, although some of them had already retired.

The country was said to have a strong national presence in the sport of billiards and snooker, which includes former and current world champions such as Efren Reyes, Ronato Alcano, Alex Pagulayan and Rubilen Amit. Another powerhouse team in the Philippine national team is swimming. It was said that the swimming team was almost composed of its Olympian tankers like Miguel Molina, Ryan Arabejo, James Walsh, Daniel Coakley, Christel Simms and Erica Totten.

The country hoped to rebound from its worst finish in SEAG the last 2 years. The country placed sixth overall with 42 golds, 91 silvers and 96 bronzes. The country hoped to regain the overall championship from Thailand, even though it really had a tough way. The country was at that point still unsure of how many gold medals the athletes could garner, since the number of athletes joining the international competition was still undetermined, although some of the athletes, such as Nathaniel Padilla, Shiela Mae Perez, Hidilyn Diaz, Rexel Ryan Fabriga, Willy Wang and Miguel Molina, were accounted for.

The country sent one of its lowest numbers of delegates, which was 153 and officials, which was 47, although this was not a final count according to POC.^[2]. Still, the number of athletes and officials to be sent in this SEAG edition was just 1/3 of the number of delegates sent in the 2007 SEAG; it was known that the Philippine team was still a powerhouse team because all of the included athletes in the list were gold and silver medalists in the 2007 SEAG and 2008 Beijing Olympians. The PSC promised to boost the earnings of the athletes who would get gold medals for the country at the SEAG.^[3]

Philippine NSAs still had leadership quarrels, which greatly affected the training of their athletes even though there were only barely three months left before the national competition happened.

Lack of government funding was also another factor why Philippine athletes had not been sent to other countries such as China to have an intensive training program.

The national sports strategy prioritised judged sports, like boxing, judo, taekwondo, diving and karate, over objectively measured disciplines such as athletics, shooting, swimming, weightlifting, tennis, table tennis and badminton, which offered a higher number of available medals. Because outcomes in judged sports relied on official scoring rather than quantifiable metrics, results could be susceptible to subjective officiating or judging errors.