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| My wife and I enjoying the live volleyball game. |
How come a middle aged guy with no affiliation whatsoever with the winning school was whooping it up?
Why would someone who once deemed the sport too unmanly in his younger years like it?
Let's go back and back and back...
As a teenager, I played hoops. I had a decent shooting touch, average passing and rebounding skills and a tremendous vertical leap. However, I couldn't utilize my left hand to the hilt and was way too slow to be a two guard.
My signature and much criticized fade away shot befuddled many defenders. I patterned it after seeing PBA legend Atoy Co's signature move hundreds of times but realized years later that it was more akin to that of Alvin Patrimonio's low post turnaround shot. No kidding, my younger brother can attest to that!
Basketball though wasn't allowed at school grounds. An old ten foot high backboard with no rim and net stood there by its lonesome as a silent witness to many fist fights among the students inside the campus.
Boys my age were then content to play "sipa" to while away their vacant periods. That too was eventually banned and I was even among those who were required to squat for an eternity as a punishment for defying the ban.
Not long after the start of my freshman year, a net was placed in the middle of the school grounds. It wasn't for tennis, not for badminton and definitely not for sepak takraw.
What's it for?
Well, what else but volleyball! The lone sport our school excelled in back in the days of side-outs, underhand serves and "balik-balik" brand of play. Our players were good enough to be champions in our town and reach the BULPRISA - the Bulacan Private Schools Association meet.
Curious to find out why the crowd was starting to swell, I craned my neck to get a glimpse of our bets. It was a mix of seniors, juniors, and sophomores. Among them is an aunt of mine who's quite tall and lanky. A perfect volleybelle specimen. The only caveat is she can't jump that high and neither were the others. Our team coached by my uncle topped the town tourneys up until my senior year.
Then there's those summer inter barrio leagues where our very own "kabarrios" played. Led by another aunt who is Mika Reyes' grandma, our girls played against the creme of our town's crop of volleybelles amidst chants of "daya" and "bunot" because we fielded in former Far Eastern University varsity players and reserves who had seen better days. Be that as it may, they were still head and shoulders above this kind of competition. Their opponents simply didn't stand a chance.
Those were my earliest exposure to the sport that is now enjoying a huge following. That's how I came to love it even at this late stage of my life. Of course, there was a time I completely forgot about it much like my passion for basketball.
It eventually came back to my subconscious by the time a lovely Brazilian named Leila Barros hit Manila by storm. The interest was revived. Too bad, I wasn't able to watch her play in the flesh.
Fast forward to 2006. Studio 23 was showing a marathon replay of UAAP games. I was out of work and with nothing more worthwhile to watch, I was glued to the games and became familiar with players like my all-time favorites - Charo Soriano and Patti Taganas of Ateneo, the FEU troika of Maica Morada, Wendy Semana and Rachel Daquis, UP's Mela Lopez and UST's Venus Bernal, Mary Jean Balse, Angge Tabaquero and the gorgeous Denise Tan.
Again, I stopped following the games until the "Fab 5" of Ateneo came along. Their brand of play caught my eye and I instantly became a Lady Eagle supporter from then on. Why? Maybe because we Filipinos love to root for the underdogs.
As a sports enthusiast, it didn't take long for me to learn the intricacies of this discipline. I now fully understand what the various positions entail, the roles of each player on the court, the rotation, the formations, the rules and violations, etc.
Too old for volleyball?
Tell that to legendary UST coach August Santamaria and others like Roger Gorayeb, Nes Pamilar, Kit Santos or even Dulce Pante and to folks much older than me who love the sport and have recently rediscovered the game.
