Shaq’s wish: A complete roster to gain chemistry

The Philippine women’s volleyball team returned to work Sunday, just two days after arriving from a 12-day training camp in Japan. And with just a month to go before the 30th Southeast Asian Games, coach Shaq delos Santos said there’s still a lot of things that the Nationals should work on.

Part of that is for Delos Santos to get a complete roster.

Top hitter Alyssa Valdez and top setter Jia Morado only joined the Nationals for just five days in Japan because of club commitments with Creamline back home in the Premier Volleyball League.

And for the coming Super Cup starting Tuesday—a full tournament which the Nationals could benefit greatly from—the PH team will miss Valdez, Morado and even Maddie Madayag, whose squad Choco Mucho was already eliminated in the PVL.

The Super Cup is arranged by teams from PVL’s rival league Philippine Superliga and the PVL really doesn’t want its players playing in its rival league—even if it’s for national team duty.

Creamline will start its Open Conference best-of-three finals against PetroGazz on Wednesday.

Delos Santos said they won’t let that bring them down.

In Japan, Delos Santos shuffled his players thoroughly and avoided establishing a fixed set of starters.

He said other teams like Thailand and Indonesia also didn’t get their lineups complete like what happened in the recent SEA Grand Prix legs held in Thailand and the Philippines.

He chooses to be positive.

“There are still so many things we need to improve on, so hopefully we get to be complete so we can work on these,” said Delos Santos.

Instead, what he is most concerned about is the team’s communication when it comes to reception which is crucial in close matches.

“Our receives and passes, especially in the endgame, that’s our main concern,” said Delos Santos.

The Nationals tested their wares against different Japanese clubs, including Kashiwa Angel Cross, Gunma Bank Green Wings, Yamanashi Chuo Bank, Hitachi and Nittai University.

All in all, the Filipinos won three sets out of 25 they played during the training camp.

But Delos Santos said they were not looking at results but on the improvements of the team which, from day one, had to make adjustments due to the players’ club team duties.