PVL: Tai Bierria thrilled to silence Choco Mucho crowd with stellar play for Cignal

Cignal import Tai Bierria. –PVL PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Tai Bierria got extra motivation from the Choco Mucho-dominated 4,000 fans that fueled her to lift Cignal to the 2022 Premier Volleyball League Reinforced Conference semifinals to silence the crown at Philsports Arena on Tuesday.

The American import, who came off the bench, drilled 18 points in the HD Spikers’ crucial 17-25, 25-22, 25-18, 25-14 victory over the Flying Titans in their do-or-die game to grab the last bus ride to the Final Four.

“It kinda gave me a little extra attitude on the court. You do something wrong, you hear all the cheers. I’m like okay, I’m gonna shut you up. Little “angas (swag)” I learned that word,” said Bierria, who had 14 kills and four aces on top of 11 digs.

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Bierria didn’t let the noise stop her and the HD Spikers as they dominated the Flying Titans in the last two sets.

“Honestly, I didn’t even notice the crowd in the fourth. At some point, you just learn to tune it out as the game goes on, but it felt good. You hear when they get a little quiet, and you know you’re doing your job,” she said.

The New Mexico University product was happy to help Cignal reach the Final Four after two crucial wins to end the eliminations, including a big win over F2 Logistics last Saturday.

“I think we’re all just happy for this moment and just wanna like sit at this moment, ’cause it’s a big deal to be in the semis, you know? A lot of really talented teams didn’t make it, and we’re blessed to be one of them [who made it]. It just shows how hard we worked,” Bierria said.

“But we’re not done. We still wanna go, we still want gold. We’re sitting with it, but at the same time, we have a good mindset of like, moving forward next game that we’ll have on Thursday.”

Cignal, which finished 5-3 in the eliminations, is joining Creamline (7-1), Chery Tiggo (6-2), and Petro Gazz. Their records will be reset for another round-robin in the semis, where the top two teams with the best records advance to the best-of-three finals.

Bierria says her team is out to give their all to finally get over the hump after settling for back-to-back bronze finishes in the first two conferences.

“I know that we’re gonna go into this next game with everything we got, and that’s just the mentality for each day, not even in the next game, already tomorrow at practice. We give everything we got tomorrow, everything the next day, and that gold is somewhere out there,” Bierria said.