Rondina says ‘no one to blame but ourselves’ amid losing skid

University of Santo Tomas’ contender status is slowly falling apart.

The Golden Tigresses have yet to win back-to-back games in the UAAP Season 80 women’s volleyball tournament, but they’ve already registered two straight defeats after losing to National University and University of the Philippines.

Cherry Rondina knows, though, that there’s no one to blame for that terrible standing and inconsistent showing so far but the Golden Tigresses themselves.

“We talked how we can fix our problems, there’s no one to blame but us,” said Rondina in Filipino. “The coaches fought for us, now it’s up to us to keep fighting.”

After their 31-33, 25-23, 25-16, 25-12 loss to the Maroons on Wednesday, the Golden Tigresses dropped a 2-4 record but remained at fourth place thanks to a three-way logjam at the second spot.

UST’s loss to UP was the first time that Rondina got outscored with Diana Carlos and Isa Molde’s 32 and 24-point outputs eclipsing the Golden Tigress’ 23.

And Rondina knows she didn’t play up to her level against the Lady Maroons.

“I’m also mad at myself, I committed so many mistakes,” said Rondina who went 23-of-57 in her spike attempts. “We really threw the game and we weren’t able to recover quickly enough to give ourselves a chance to win.”

UST’s conundrum started as early as the first set when they held a 19-10 lead but allowed UP to come back and force the set to go into the 30s.

And although the Lady Maroons flunked in the first set, they eventually built the foundation that allowed them to keep the Golden Tigresses at bay until the final point.

Rondina added that there’s nothing to go but up for them and she vowed that UST will recover.

“We haven’t lost hope and I told them every time we’ll go into battle we should’ve the mindset that we will win,” said Rondina. “I can say this, and I can be proud of this, that my teammates and I can win.”