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EVEN
during a school test, the young girl couldn’t get any
relief. She hung her head and let her long black and
brownish hair hide her face, but from the corner of her
eye, she could see and feel her 40-something classmates’
laser-like looks boring holes right into being.
It was a bonus question, albeit a loaded
one, “Bettina was absent from class yesterday. She was
at the Ateneo game yesterday where the Blue Eagles lost.
True or false?”
The young elementary student from
Assumption bit her lip and thought to herself, “I’m not
giving you the satisfaction of seeing me squirm.”
The “bonus question” was in relation to
her predictable absences during game days and penned by
her teacher who went to a certain school along Taft
Avenue and never failed to take the opportunity to rub
in the team from Katipunan’s hard luck.
And as surely as the sun rises from the
east, Bettina’s teachers would receive a letter from her
parents the following day asking her to be excused as
she had to urgently attend to a “family matter.”
The “matter” is an Ateneo basketball
game, which is about as family as any game can get for
the alumni base that spanned generations of kith and
kin. And for the brood of Raffy and Marichi Jose and
their four children, they wouldn’t want it any other
way. Of the four, young Bettina is the only one not yet
in Ateneo, and yet is perhaps the “famous” one of them
all. Everyone knows he as “the cheerleader.”
Several years ago, Bettina first asked
to tag along to a game, much to her mother’s concern.
“We were afraid that if the Blue Eagles lost, she’d be
affected.”
Ateneo did lose the first game Bettina
ever watched, and she admitted that she bawled herself
out. And though she has three older brothers, all who
are all in Ateneo, she is perhaps the most rabid in
terms of devotion.
The young and impressionable lass found
herself attracted to the brightly garbed cheer dancers
of the school and was inspired by their spirit. Her
parents cut out pictures of the Ateneo cheer dancers and
paid a tailor to copy the uniforms. And dressed in a
cheer dancer’s outfit, she was a sight up in the stands,
where she joined the Blue Babble Battalion’s motions and
raised her fist with fervor after every victory.
She was even asked once to join the
cheering squad on the floor during halftime, which left
her grinning from ear to ear. “That was thrilling and
memorable, except for the fact that we lost in that
game,” she smirked.
On one occasion, he parents threw a
surprise birthday party celebration for their daughter.
They brought her to a darkened village clubhouse where,
on cue, the lights were switched on to reveal her
classmates, friends and the entire Blue Eagle team,
which was on hand to greet her and share some cake. “Of
course I cried,” smiled Bettina. “It’s a great birthday
present.”
Even with the highs, there are the lows,
and not just in the stands of the Araneta Coliseum.
During a recent school fair in Assumption, people paid
money for her to be thrown into “jail,” where bail was
set to her cheering the opposing school’s yells and
songs into a microphone. “I did it,” she said,
matter-of-factly. “I needed to get out.”
But it isn’t only from fans of other
teams where she gets her ribbing. One time, during an
Ateneo game, one fan in blue and white admonished her to
do her job—to cheer its team on. “I guess he didn’t know
that she was only in grade school,” remembered her
father who, along with his sons, take great care to
shield her from the slants and ugly side of competition.
“Sometimes people get so affected by
what happens on the court that they forget there are
minors in the stands, as well,” added the elder Jose,
who admitted to previously being unable to curb his
emotions. “It does get frustrating, but we really have
to watch what we say and do up there because there are
so many others watching.”
And so were people watching Bettina.
Like supporters of any other team, dinner outside after
the match, one’s mood, or the day’s activities, largely
depended on the result of the games. “If we won, ang
sarap ng kain. But if we lost, we’d all go home and no
one would be talking,” confided Marichi. “We’d just eat
a quiet dinner at home then go to bed. But for Bettina,
it’s a little harder.”
The majority of her classmates support
the rival school, and whether the two archfoes play one
another or not is beside the point. Any loss by Ateneo
and it was going to be a long day, in more ways than
one, from the constant teasing. “Sometimes they’d place
a picture of me in the game on my table,” she said,
shocked at the great lengths people would take to spite
her.
But that has changed, just as she shed
that cheerleader’s uniform that was a fixture during
games. She’s no longer the young girl in ponytails and
the teasing has largely stopped now—“Maybe it’s because
I’m taller now,“ she snickered.
The television cameras that, time and
again, are trained on her because of the raw emotion on
her face has revealed a young girl in bloom. During one
of last year’s games, color commentator Sev Sarmenta
marveled how Bettina had all grown up, and grown up
right on our television sets. She smiled at the thought,
as she’s now taller and her voice huskier. “Yuck,” she
cringed in horror at those pictures of her younger self.
“She was in an exchange-student program
in France last year, that’s why she missed half the
games,” related her mother. “Her immediate concern
was….‘What about the Blue Eagles?’ I told her that the
exchange program wasn’t an everyday thing and she’d be
back after a bit. She really is such a die-hard fan that
even in another country, she would always ask to be
updated.”
Incredibly, if and when she does get
into Ateneo, she has no desire to be a cheer dancer.
“I’d want to join the band and be a part of the drumline.
That would be the coolest.”
What about any potential suitors from
the other side?
“He’s going to have to get an
application to Ateneo and transfer.” |
