Michele Gumabao. PVL PHOTO
Creamline and Petro Gazz could have trained all they needed to be best-equipped to win.
But Sherwin Meneses, the Cool Smashers’ coach, will be the first to tell everyone that there’s no way to train the mind for a game like this one.
“This won’t be about skills anymore,” Meneses said. “It’s all about mental toughness now.”
The Cool Smashers and the Angels slug it out for all Premier Volleyball League (PVL) All-Filipino Conference marbles on Thursday, a fitting finale to an enthralling series that needed all of nine long sets in the first two games to take the title playoffs back to where it started at Mall of Asia Arena.
Creamline will be coming in with some sort of momentum after an 18-25, 25-16, 25-18, 23-25, 15-6 Game 2 win on Tuesday where the Cool Smashers pulled away from a 2-2 count in the fifth set to prevail in a marathon that certainly took something out of the players from both sides.
Which is why Petro Gazz’s Oliver Almadro wants his charges to put the bitter taste of that loss behind and concentrate on the task at hand.
“We’ll forget about the loss and we’ll bounce back in Game 3,” Almadro, who is seeking his first championship in the PVL, said.
Petro Gazz Angels. PVL PHOTO
Creamline and Petro Gazz battle it out one last time starting at 5:30 p.m.
Petro Gazz won the series opener, 22-25, 26-24, 23-25, 24-26. The second game started like the first as the Angels dealt the Cool Smashers a rare first set loss in a championship series only for Creamline to fight back and prevail.
“The skills (of the players from both teams) will always be there,” Meneses explained. “What’s important is whose character will prevail, who won’t budge and who won’t allow themselves to lose.”
Almadro, after that Game 1 win, had said in an earlier interview that his team doesn’t care which game they close it out so long as they have the chance to do it.
“We will take it whichever game it comes,” Almadro had said. “As long as we have the chance, we will fight it out.”
That the Angels did on Tuesday only for them to suffer a cold spell during the most critical phase of the fifth set.