Conquering the next volleyball level

IT’S GREAT to have two volleyball leagues and a generous serving of school competitions but there’s nothing like an international tournament to spike greater interest in the sport.

The Asian Volleyball Confederation Women’s Club Championship now playing out at the Alonte Arena in Biñan, Laguna, allows fans to see where the Philippine game stands against some of the best clubs in the region.

The Foton Tornadoes, runners-up in the last All-Filipino Conference of the Philippine Superliga, represents the country. Foton’s core of Jaja Santiago, Rhea Dimaculangan, EJ Laure and Cherry Riondina has additional firepower from in F2 Logistics’ Aby Maraño and RC Cola-Army’s Jovelyn Gonzaga.

Lindsay Stalzer and Ariel Usher are the two American reinforcements allowed to join the team since it is primarily a club tournament. Italian Fabio Menta has been brought over as well to fine-tune the Tornadoes to suit the international game that is quicker and not necessarily reliant on power.

The team has already scored its first win, a straight sets conquest of Hong Kong on opening day. There were some tense moments when the Tornadoes got off to a shaky start, falling behind 4-8 in the first frame. Then, the games of Maraño, Santiago and Gonzaga kicked in with Dimaculangan shuffling her sets flawlessly.

The Tornadoes advanced to the quarterfinals despite blowing a 2-1 set lead and losing to a Vietnamese club last Sunday.

The real tests lie ahead with teams from Thailand and Japan also in the tournament. It won’t be easy sailing for the Tornadoes given that many of these club squads have been playing together for some time and are bannered by some excellent players. A semifinal finish seems a fair goal to achieve but with the home crowd willing to travel the distance to Biñan, some surprises could happen.

The international character of the tournament will also rekindle talk on what kind of national team that could be developed given the immense popularity of the game and the emergence of so many talented Filipino players. There’s no question that the international game inspires the players and seeing them combining with players from rival teams thrills the fans no end. Playing for flag and country brings out the best in everyone, no doubt.

The best solution for a women’s national volleyball team is to allow the players to stay competitive by playing with their club or school squads. It will be hard to find a patron who would be willing to fund the training of the national team on a sustained basis, covering for the expenses like travel, food, allowances, training gear and other costs.

The pool system, as long as it is fair and not based on the old bata-bata (patronage) system where coaches simply selected players who played for them before, should be a valid place from which to draw members of the team for the next Southeast Asian Games and other international tournaments.

It all boils down to how well everybody in the sport can sit down and talk to see how we can all learn from international club tournaments and our own local fare. That’s because the next level Philippine volleyball has to conquer is the international game. Doing so will secure the game’s popularity for a long time.