Lady Eagles book return flight to Finals

Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

Payback. Redemption. Validation. Fetch whatever buzzwords you want, but for the Ateneo Lady Eagles, it was about making sure they weren’t exiting UAAP Season 81 women’s volleyball.

And hear them out: They aren’t done yet.

Forced to burn a twice-to-beat advantage in the Final Four, the Lady Eagles shook off the challenge of the Far Eastern University Lady Tamaraws in a 25-20, 21-25, 25-23, 25-14 victory in their rubber match Wednesday at Filoil Flying V Centre.

“We’re not finished yet, we will trust in the Lord, but we will work harder,” said coach Oliver Almadro.

“There’s one more job to do but we’re thankful we got here,” said Ateneo skipper Bea De Leon. “We didn’t entertain the thought that this would be our last game.”

It wasn’t. The Lady Eagles will now face University of Santo Tomas—which earlier dethroned last year’s champion La Salle in the other Final Four pairing—in the best-of-three title showdown starting on Saturday at Mall of Asia Arena.

The Lady Tamaraws forced the decider with a heart-stopping 10-25, 23-25, 22-25, 12-25, 15-8 victory over the Lady Eagles last Saturday.

This time, Ateneo used a steel-nerved performance in the third set to knock the fight out of FEU.

“We didn’t even treat an early exit as one of our options for today,” said Maddie Madayag, who had 12 points.

Almadro thus towed Ateneo to its seventh finals appearance in eight years. The Lady Eagles missed the Finals last year after losing to, well, FEU in the semifinals.

Almadro and his wards got payback for that.

“I’m just an instrument; the most important thing today is the team’s heart,” said Almadro. “From the No. 1 player down to No. 14, they really worked hard, pushed each other up.”

Kat Tolentino led all Ateneo scorers with 19 points.