Lately, Aby Maraño noticed, the F2 Logistics training has become very serious—intense, even.
It should mean something, especially coming from the player who personifies intensity and popularized catchphrase “Beast Mode, Don’t Care.”
“It’s different in training. It’s like we all want something and we won’t stop until we achieve it,” said Maraño, who is team captain of the Cargo Movers, who will also serve as skipper of the national team in the coming Asian Games.
She isn’t the only one who sees things that way.
The coaching staff, led by no-nonsense head mentor Ramil de Jesus, keeps on bombarding his team with the same message: “Unfinished business.”
The Cargo Movers took the first step to finishing that, eliminating the Foton Tornadoes in the Philippine Superliga All-Filipino conference quarterfinals on Tuesday to become the first team to catch a bus to the championship round.
F2 Logistics will face the winner between two-time defending champion Petron and Cignal HD, which were locked in a battle late on Thursday.
It’s not that the franchise has not won an All-Filipino crown before. The Cargo Movers took the 2016 top plum at the expense of the Tornadoes.
But F2 Logistics has not won a major conference since upsetting top rival Petron for the 2017 Grand Prix. They have also lost two straight All-Filipino title showdowns against the Blaze Spikers.
Maraño, the team’s heart and soul, is optimistic that they can end the string of defeats to their fierce rivals this time because of their healthy lineup and the addition of heavy hitter Kalei Mau.
A deep bench and a well-tested system, according to Maraño, will be the Cargo Movers’ weapons.
“That’s our mind-set, we need to prove to him (De Jesus) that we are out to do our best to win that goal,” Maraño said. “We also have to show our fighting spirit.”
That spirit is right up Maraño’s alley.