Pocari Sweat. FILE PHOTO
THE loss may sting for Bali Pure, but playing coach Charo Soriano knows that the season still ain’t over and the team can still have a saving grace with a third place finish in the Shakey’s V-League Season 13 Open Conference.
“This is a painful loss, but we can’t really dwell on this so much cause the tournament is still not over,” she said. “We still have a best-of-three series against Laoag and we have to prepare for that. We can’t be complacent and lax. We need to keep on improving and be better also.”
In what was a semifinals series for the ages, the Purest Water Defenders fell in the end, losing to Pocari Sweat in four sets, 15-25, 27-25, 25-11, 25-13 on Monday to advance to the Finals.
Soriano rued the errors her girls committed, especially in the end where Bali Pure lost hold of a 19-16 lead and allowed the Lady Warriors to battle back and erect a 23-21 advantage late in the fourth set.
“Admittedly, it was those errors that cost us the games and the errors in the last set. The minor errors cost us the game,” she said.
Bali Pure’s lack of chemistry also caught up to them in Game 3, with Pocari Sweat proving to be the more cohesive unit, a fact that is even shared by Soriano.
“You can really see that Pocari has the more solid team,” she said. “They have been more of a team than we are and they showed that today. They played the same tempo from start to finish and our play was very sporadic. We would have high energy but we will also have the same level of low energy. Our game was up-and-down. They played more steady and their composure really won the game.”
Despite failing to make it to the championship round, Soriano could still hold her head high knowing that her girls, anchored by MVPs Alyssa Valdez and Grethcel Soltones, did their best to represent the squad. And she is optimistic that this would not be the end for Bali Pure.
“From the start, we said we want to focus on the season first,” she said. “But there have been talks already about sustaining and keeping the team, but there’s no confirmation yet.”