Austria used to pressure of bringing titles to SMB

San Miguel Beer head coach Leo Austria. Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

Coaching a team such as San Miguel entails a lot of pressure.

It’s either championship or bust, and in the past five years three coaches have faced the axe for failing to deliver any hardware.

Olsen Racela, Gee Abanilla, and Biboy Ravanes all failed to lead San Miguel to a single championship, back when the franchise carried the name Petron Blaze Boosters, to a single championship.

That dry spell was eventually labeled as the Petronovela and it lasted from 2012 until 2014 as the storied franchise experienced a tumultuous period where the core of Arwind Santos, Alex Cabagnot, and Jay Washington failed to win any title.

Petronovela reached its climax in 2013 when import Renaldo Balkman choked Santos in a heated exchange between the teammates. 

As the Beermen slowly started to lose its luster, one man was tasked to turn things around and return the franchise to its glory days.

Leo Austria was tasked to bring San Miguel back to the top and it didn’t take long before he delivered the team’s first title to end its championship drought.

From Austria’s first year in 2014, the Beermen have won four titles including three straight Philippine Cups and that feat earned San Miguel the Perpetual Trophy.

And Austria, a cool and collected figure on and off the court, has managed to shake off the pressure that comes with his position as San Miguel’s head coach.

“I shrugged that pressure off,” said Austria Thursday at SportsIQ, INQUIRER’s omni-platform sports talk show. “I just want to be calm and I don’t want to feel the pressure.”

Austria is just the second coach in PBA history to win three straight crows in the PBA Philippine Cup, after Chot Reyes, who won from 2011 to 2013 with Talk N’ Text.

He acknowledged the fact that his job will always have the pressure of delivering a championship, but after four title runs Austria has started to get used to it.

“Ever since I’ve been in the team, the pressure’s always there and I’m used to it,” said Austria. “The first conference was really a test for me and I know that if I make it I’ll continue as a coach.”

“But I think this has been my destiny because we kept on winning, especially the All-Filipino.”