MANILA, Philippines—Adamson is entering a new era and head coach Air Padda is confident her team would find its identity for the UAAP Season 81 women’s volleyball tournament.
Padda said she won’t expect her new Lady Falcons to become the next Jema Galanzas or the future Mylene Paats–she wants her players to become the first of their name.
“I’m not going to throw into their faces that ‘you have to replace Jema, this is what Mylene did’ but I want to try and give them their own identity so they can build on that,” said Padda.
“I think we will use Jema, Mylene, and Fhen [Emnas], as inspiration because those three girls have stories and even though we didn’t make it into the Final Four it was really amazing just going on a journey with them and I think all of the players coming into the team this year want to experience that too.”
The three former Lady Falcons were instrumental in the team’s 6-8 finish in Season 80 though Adamson failed to enter the Final Four that year, falling short at fifth place.
Galanza was the fifth best scorer in the league with a total of 207 points while Paat was at 10th with 182 points. Emnas, for her part, was the no.4 setter with 7.67 sets per period.
Left to carry the burden for Adamson now are Chiara Permentilla, Bernadette Flora, Mary Joy Dacoron, and captain Eli Soyud and even though none have the same star power as Galanza’s, Padda is nothing but confident about her team.
“I have more players now in the program who have been under me and I’m kind of capitalizing on that,” said Padda. “They’ve been under me the longest and I really feel like the system is more on track than it’s ever been.”
Padda admitted that her first two years with the Soaring Falcons hit some turbulence especially since she inherited a lineup that played under Sherwin Meneses and, for a time, Domingo Custodio.
“We were still working on setting the system instead of trying to build for two years and now the system’s set, and even with the underclassmen coming in they don’t know any other system than my own,” said Padda who took up the Lady Falcons’ coaching job in 2017.
“They kind of latched into it in a way that I could never get the older kids to do when I first came in.”