Lady Eagles vow fightback vs Spikers

MANILA, Philippines - A defiant Ateneo refused to be disheartened after yielding a four-setter to rival La Salle in the UAAP LXXIX women’s volleyball finals opener.

“The mantra of this team is ‘heart-strong’ and we’ll live up to that. It’s not over. It’s Game One, it’s (a) best-of-three (series), and on Saturday, we’ll meet again (for Game 2) and we’ll get there (deciding match),” AdMU’s Bea de Leon said with confidence.

The Lady Spikers finally solved the season-long puzzle that is the Lady Eagles and rallied to a vengeful 21-25, 29-27, 25-22, 25-20 victory last Tuesday to close in on a titular repeat.

Ateneo skipper Jia Morado said the team is taking the bitter loss in stride, staying confident of its title quest.

“After the game, no one seemed down naman and that’s a good thing. Pagdating ng (When we entered the) dugout, we were pretty optimistic naman. No one was dragged down by this loss,” she said.

“This is the finals. Expected na lalaban ang parehong teams (Both teams are really fighting hard). So what we can do is move on from this and focus on the next one,” she added.

The Lady Eagles, Morado noted, were hurt by the 40 errors they committed in Game One.

“I think we just made more errors than we should have, but then we know what to work on in training. It’s not something that we’re super worried about because we know what we have to work on,” she said.

The Lady Spikers, on the other hand, won’t fall into the trap of getting content with simply defeating AdMU for the first time this season.

“Okay, we beat them but we shouldn’t be overconfident and (continue trying to) improve for the better,” said Kim Kiana Dy.