Hans Sy turned around National University’S sporting fortunes. His next aim: transforming NU into an academic powerhouse.

Many things go

into the making of a varsity sports champion. For Hans Sy, the Philippines’ leading shopping mall builder, who is also chairman of the board of the National University (NU), it boils down to “attention to details”. He leaves nothing to chance, including the design and color of the uniform of the NU Bulldogs, last year’s interuniversity basketball champions.

The 59-year-old president of SM Prime Holdings Inc., which operates 56 shopping malls in the Philippines and China, including three of the world’s biggest, took the time to research various designs for the Bulldogs’ official attire. He bought the uniforms of varsity teams of American schools whose official colors – blue and gold – were similar to the colors of the 115-year-old NU, which the Sy family acquired in 2008.

Sy proudly wore the team’s newly designed jacket for a FORBES photo shoot at the SM Mall of Asia Arena stadium. The Bulldogs’ official jacket has the NU logo sewn in gold on the left side and gold stripes adorn the collar and wrists.

Before redesigning the team’s uniform, Sy also recruited one of the country’s best basketball coaches for the Bulldogs, built air-conditioned dormitories for the athletes, improved their nutrition and toughened the training regime.

The results were dramatic. In 2012, the Bulldogs made it to the semi-finals for the first time in a decade. Last October, the team bagged the championship for the first time since 1954. Not to be left behind were the Lady Bulldogs, the women’s basketball team, which won its first University Athletic Association of the Philippines championship last year. Contributing to the school’s record eight podium finishes in the past school year were the school’s volleyball, badminton and lawn tennis teams. Even NU’s cheer dancers, an often-ridiculed squad, jiggled, pirouetted and executed gravity-defying stunts that earned them back-to-back championships in 2013 and 2014.

Though winning at sports is rewarding in itself, there is a hard-nosed business purpose to all the time and money put into NU’s sports programs.

“If I advertise that ‘National University is under new management; so what? Instead I said, ‘Let’s look into the sports program because when people talk about schools, they talk about sports; ” says Sy.

NU President Teodoro Ocampo adds that varsity sports is the quickest way to raise the number of students, which had dwindled to a dismal 1,000 in 2008 from a peak of 14,000 in the 1960s. “Of course, we want to improve academic quality, but that takes time. Students graduate after four years. A basketball season is just four months. If we do well, we get a winner’s tag immediately,” Ocampo explains.

The son of the country’s richest called on his friends and business partners to manage NU’s sports teams.

Sy’s father, Henry Sr., the country’s richest, has a special affinity for education. Though the founder of the SM retailing group never finished college, he fully realizes the value of a tertiary education in improving one’s life and the country’s economic prospects. The family’s SM Foundation supports about a thousand college scholars every year.

Long before the country’s tycoons began buying up schools, the foundation partnered with IBM to put up Asia Pacific College (APC) in 1991to offer four-year courses for software programmers. APC also pioneered collaboration with leading companies to improve the job prospects of its graduates by ensuring its curriculum was in line

with the needs of employers.

In 2008, the Sys bought a controlling stake in National University from the founding Jhocson family with the help of Paulino Tan, Sy’s uncle and a respected educator. A fire that gutted four NU buildings in 1998 triggered a downward spiral in enrollment and revenue, prompting the old owners to eventually sell to the Sy family.

“Surviving on our own at the time was close to impossible because of the measly revenues that we were generating from enrollment. A partnership and equity deal with SM [seemed] ideal,” says Ocampo, a third-generation Jhocson. He convinced the eight families who had stakes in NU to open the door to an outsider. The Sys were able to acquire an initial 40% of the school, raising this to 70% when they bought new shares.

With a low student population that was below the break-even point of 4,000, boosting enrollment and improving the school’s buildings and facilities became a priority for the new owners of NU.

The Sys invested an initial Php400 million, which funded the construction of an eight-story building that housed classrooms, offices and laboratories. The new owners also financed the phased retirement of faculty and staff aged 60 and above, which made up 70% of personnel. Faculty and staff pay were increased to recruit young blood. A multi-purpose gymnasium with an NBA sized basketball court, volleyball and badminton courts and a jogging oval were also built.

There was little budget left for the basketball and other sports teams. To get around that, Sy gathered SM’s loyal contractors and mall locators who have worked with him for decades. “I told them, ‘Look, you guys always tell me you want to show your gratitude to me by giving me gifts, which I always turn down. This time I need your help. You help me develop the teams.”

He assigned each one a team to manage. For the basketball teams, Manny Sy (no relation) of New Golden City Builders, a long-time contractor of SM buildings, was tasked to oversee the Bulldogs, the main team; Sergio Yu of Hyundai Elevator, the Bullpups, the junior team; and Dioceldo Sy of Ever Bilena, the Lady Bulldogs, the women’s team. Sy’s younger brother Herbert was put in charge of the women’s volleyball team.

He asked each manager to prepare a five year turnaround strategy. “I would tell them to present their budget, and 1would also share with them on those budget. Once 1 have agreed with their program, 1 let them handle the team on their own.”

SM’s provincial malls became a recruitment ground for potential student athletes. A few recruits tried to set conditions such as exemption from academic requirements. The school rejected these demands. As a student athlete himself while at Xavier School and De La Salle University, Sy strictly observed academic discipline. “To play well, you have to be intelligent,” he says.

Sy’s business-like approach to managing the school’s teams paid off after the Bulldogs won the basketball championship in 2014. Their laggard to champions story sent social media abuzz. As other NU sports teams hugged the limelight with their own victories, more alumni, including former president Fidel Ramos and other officials and celebrities, proudly announced they were NU graduates.

Enrollment grew. More than 7,700 studied at NU during school year 2014-2015 from about 1,700 six years ago. Money earned from the increase in enrollment was ploughed back to the school coffers to further improve facilities. Tuition fees remained affordable.

“We were suddenly on people’s minds. The first weekend of exams for the next school year, about 300 came. Every weekend, more came. We had to add examination rooms. It’s amazing,” beams vice president for operations Nilo Ocampo.

Sy reflects on what made the turnaround possible. “It’s all about planning and strategy. Planning is understanding who will be able to contribute. Strategy is getting the right people to do what is expected,” he says.

Sy is not contented. He’s lining up managers for the swimming, track and field, judo, fencing and other teams. “I am about 40% behind those sports,” he says.

“We would also like to be known for producing top caliber graduates.”

– HANS SY, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY CHAIR

He is also building more facilities. The buildings, which were put up in 2009, can accommodate up to 8,000 students. With current growth rates, the school will need space for more than 8,200 students by school year 2015-2016.

The school is considering buying property around the Sampaloc campus, which sits on a 13,000-square-meter lot. The Sys bought the Nazareth School two blocks away and transferred the grade school and high school students there.

Sy is preparing the next stage of NU’s transformation: producing not only varsity champions but also top placers in the country’s various board examinations for lawyers, accountants, engineers and health professionals.

The school’s performance in several board examinations is already above average. Results of the civil engineering licensure exams announced in December 2014 showed that 63.2% of takers from NU passed, above the average passing rate of 49.48%. However, the school was not among the seven best-performing schools.

APC is also helping the university improve its information technology courses. APC is considered one of the best schools in the field and is recognized by the Commission on Higher Education as a center of excellence in information technology and computer engineering.

“We would also like to be known for producing top caliber graduates,” says Sy, hoping that his business-like approach to producing sports champions can be applied to boosting NU’s academic standing. ‘Given his recent record, he has more than a sporting chance of succeeding.