If I had the chance to talk with Ateneo’s rookie volleybelle Michelle Morente after the UAAP title series, I feel certain she’d tell me she never expected a championship so soon.
In fact, she may also admit that she never expected to make it outright to Team A, without going through Team B, right on her freshman year in college.
Not that she wasn’t good enough. It’s just that she had no clear gauge of how good she really is, although she had played varsity since her elementary days at Jose Abad Santos Memorial School, straight through high school.
Michelle had the opportunity to hone her spiking skills and fine-tune her game when her family moved to the US, where she pursued her studies and further played the sport.
She stayed in America for a number of years, but on her junior year in high school, she decided to return to the Philippines where she again enrolled at JASMS and played varsity volleyball and basketball at the same time.
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“In time she was attracting the attention of college coaches,” related her former volleyball teammate and close friend Daniella, who lives just behind JASMS and with whom she would hang out with other schoolmates every now and then.
“Michelle got an offer to play basketball in Ateneo and volleyball in Letran College and the University of Santo Tomas. She was confused and didn’t know which offer to accept. Michelle is very athletic and is also good in basketball.”
Daniella wasn’t exactly surprised when she got a call from Michelle relaying the good news that she was going to play for Ateneo, where Daniella was a college sophomore.
“But I will be playing volleyball, and not basketball,” Michelle told her.
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Since Michelle was deep in volleyball training and Daniella focused on her studies, the two hardly got together.
There simply wasn’t time to hang out like they used to.
But Daniella would always watch Michelle’s games, even if only on television, cheering wildly for her friend and her school. She is very proud of her friend.
Moments after the knockout match of the final series between archrivals Ateneo and La Salle, Daniella called to announce that the Lady Eagles had won, her voice cracking. I could almost see tears welling in her eyes.
I told her I was watching the game on television.