ATENEO, unlike in years past, wasn’t exactly the favorite to win the crown in Season 81 of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines women’s volleyball tournament.
A season-opening loss to archrival De La Salle added log to the fire that the Lady Eagles are not championship material this season.
Add that Game One setback to a fired up Sisi Rondina, Eya Laure and the entire University of Santo Tomas (UST) side and the Lady Eagles were, again, not in a caliber capable of winning it all.
But they proved doubters wrong and turned the tables around against the inspired and hungrier Golden Tigresses with an emphatic 25-17, 25-22, 25-22 Game Three victory on Saturday before a crowd reached 21,437-strong at the MOA Arena.
Title No. 3 locked and delivered safely to Katipunan—much like in those days when Alyssa Valdez was the Lady Eagles who won it all for Ateneo.
“It’s not how you start, but it’s how you end,” an ecstatic Ateneo Coach Oliver Almadro said. “We lost the first match of the season, and many people counted us out.”
“But we made it because of our faith and courage, and also the trust to each other,” he stressed.
Almadro has won three consecutive men’s volleyball titles for Ateneo and this one was his first for the women’s squad.
Ateneo had veteran spikers Kat Tolentino, Maddie Madayag and Finals MVP Bea de Leon to lean on in neutralizing the duo of Rondina and Laure.
Rondina and Laure, the season’s MVP and top rookie, respectively, gave the Lady Eagles a beating in Game One, 25-17, 25-16, 25-20. But they couldn’t sustain their form—and for Laure her powerful ankle—in Game Two and yielded, 26-24, 14-25, 25-21, 25-15 to find themselves reeling against the ropes.
And then Game Three.
It was virtually an all Ateneo show and only Rondina held for the girls from España.
Tolentino scattered 15 points, while Madayag and de Leon unleashed lethal hits that secured them the straight-set title conquest.
Almadro offered sweet words for the Tigresses.
“UST pushed us forward. They really had the passion and the talent,” Almadro said. “But my players trusted the system. It’s not yet perfect but we just put our trust to it.”
Image credits: Nonie Reyes