The last time Buddy Encarnado was patrolling the sidelines of the Philippine Basketball Association—more than two decades ago, he already bore the reputation as someone who would make a stand in the name of homegrown basketball players.

The Sta. Lucia squad he was handling as team manager then was a paragon of his advocacy, fighting the wave of the early invasion of Filipinos born or raised abroad and relenting only late in the franchise’s history when it became apparent the team’s competitiveness would suffer.

That status and that mission could forge a lasting identity for the league as it looks to find its own space in the varsity conversation alongside the more popular UAAP and NCAA basketball tournaments.

Now at the helm of a collegiate league, Encarnado says he still has the passion to travel to far-flung places, looking to discover the next unpolished basketball gem.

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“I’ve been to different provinces already, just looking for those homegrown players, which is something I really want to push for,” Encarnado said during the Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum on Tuesday.

He spoke of instances when he did stumble upon provincial prospects from places as relatively remote as Camotes Island and talked about how he has pushed that agenda in his current undertaking.

That, plus a subtle name change that is resonant and profound on second look, could help the third-best collegiate league in the country cast its identity in stone.

“I’d like to make a correction,” he said. “The NCRAA no longer means National Capital Region Athletic Association. It means National Capital and Regional Athletic Association.”

While it seems merely a matter of semantics, the message sent by the additional conjunction has a huge impact on both the NCRAA’s current status and its mission.

While a lot of “big programs in the other major collegiate leagues also look to recruit from outside the country,” Encarnado said, the NCRAA continues to embrace his philosophy of providing a platform for homegrown student-athletes.

That status and that mission could forge a lasting identity for the league as it looks to find its own space in the varsity conversation alongside the more popular UAAP and NCAA basketball tournaments.

The decoupling of the original NCRAA meaning underscores that the league’s name no longer merely defines the geography of the schools that participate in the organization’s tournament. There’s still that, of course, as this season’s participants include teams from outside the National Capital Region.

But it now also highlights the NCRAA’s thrust of focusing its recruitment on oft-overlooked regions in a bid to find the next homegrown basketball star.

And the league could not have found a better man to carry on that vision than the one who serves as its general manager.

(Francis T. J. Ochoa is the sports editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer)