Philippine Women's Volleyball Team Lost to Indonesia in 12th AWCVC: Failed To Get 7th Place Finish

Photo courtesy of Rachelle Ann Daquis' Facebook Fan Page.

June 25, 2011-This is the final game of our Philippine Women's Volleyball Team in the 12th Asian Women's Club Volleyball Championship (AWCVC) and they had to face Indonesia to determine who will occupy the 7th place in the tournament. Going into the game, both of the teams are win-less and each of the them certainly wants to win and wants to finish the tournament at least at 7th place.

At the start of the game, the Philippine Team seemed to have the advantage over Indonesia because they are older than the Indonesians. Indonesia has a 16-year old player in their line-up and judging by their looks, they really look younger than the Philippine team. That young player's name is Sugandi. But as the game develops, the Indonesians proved me wrong because they seemed to have better plays than our team. Our weak reception was still our biggest problem all tournament long even against the Indonesians. Even if our team made the adjustment of putting Ms. Dahlia Cruz in the back row as their libero. But with this adjustment our team was able to get the 3rd set from the Indonesians.

The same story haunted our team in this game. In the first set, the score was 25-21 in favor of Indonesia. Again, it was only Rachel Ann Daquis who showed a tremendous amount of effort and an incommensurable courage to help her team in scoring and in receiving the ball from the Indonesians. She may not receive the MVP award of the tournament but for me she's already an MVP. I'm sure she will get what is due for her in the future because that's just the law of nature. Plant good efforts today and tomorrow you'll get the fruits of your labor. Going back into the game, as you can see, the score was a bit close in the first set. We were able to make some runs, but Indonesia was able to maintain their lead because of our poor reception.

In the second set the score was in favor of Indonesia, 25-17. We tried to chase their lead but they were able to score some back breaking service aces. All in all they had 4 service aces in this game. That's how bad our service reception is. Indonesia's service specialist seemed to be targeting one of the Carolino sisters. Her plan worked.

In the third set, our team showed a bit of fighting spirit as they made a valiant effort to get the lead from Indonesia. We were able to get back into the game after being down by 8 points, 16-8 in the early part of the 3rd set. Rachel Ann Daquis was the one who worked the hardest in this set. She was scampering all over the court just to receive the ball. Her efforts paid off as they won the 3rd set. This is the first ever set that our team won in the tournament. Daquis really showed that she doesn't want to just lose to Indonesia without a fight. She probably know that if we will lose against them, that will be their first time to beat the Philippines. Daquis doesn't want that to happen as she doubled her effort to give to us this set. The final set score was 28-26 in favor of the Philippines.

And so the game went up to the 4th set. This is our first taste of a 4-setter game in the tournament. Sadly, we lost in this all important set via 25-18. Daquis and her teammates were too tired to compete in the 4th set. As a result, we lost against Indonesia and they were able to finish the 12th AWCVC in the 7th place.

The efforts of Daquis were not completely wasted because when the camera man focused his camera to the stands I saw that the people who watched our game was smiling and they look happy. I believe that our team won the hearts of the viewers because they showed that they have the potential to be a great team and that they didn't go down without a fight. We may be at 8th place but still we were able to make a statement that the Philippines is back in the world of volleyball after almost 5 years of absence in the international tournaments. I'm sure that we'll get back at those teams who beat us in this tournament. We'll have train double time and we'll have to include younger and more athletic players in the Philippines Volleyball Team in preparation for the 2011 SEA Games on November.

The complete set scores:

25-21, 25-17, 28-26, and 25-18