Chenie Tagaod (right) hammers a point for FEU. —PVL PHOTO
Far Eastern University (FEU) ended the women’s V-League Collegiate Challenge on Wednesday with a perfect slate.
But the Lady Tamaraws know that their work is still far from over.
“It’s very important for us to enter the semifinals [at No.1] because everything that we worked for and all that we experienced is coming together now,” player of the game Chenie Tagaod said on the heels of dealing University of the East (UE) a second straight loss, 16-25, 28-26, 25-13, 25-21, at Paco Arena in Manila.
“But we still have to work on [our game]. We’re not done yet. There is still a lot of work to be done.”
The Lady Tamaraws have been struggling with a recurring problem of minimizing their errors and Far Eastern’s win over the Lady Warriors still showed a 38-error hole in their play.
And 15 of those errors came in the Lady Tamaraws’ shaky first set.
“We adjusted our play and we accepted that we had lapses [in the first set] so in the second set we [hit] reset and decided to call their plays more,” said Tagaod who led the Lady Tamaraws in the come-from-behind win with 16 points on 13 kills.
Tagaod is one of the tenured players for FEU with Tin Ubaldo and libero Max Juangco. The more experienced trio has been providing leadership for younger teammates.
“We talked about giving our all and teaching the younger players to work more during our training so that we can unleash what we practiced in our games,” Tagaod said after spearheading FEU’s charge from the second set and shifting the momentum to her squad.
FEU interim coach Manolo Refugia echoed Tagaod on still needing to improve their play after seeing his wards struggle to reach match point and allowing UE to close the gap in the final set.
Refugia continues to lead the Lady Tams with former coach Tina Salak’s system in place.
“Going into the V-league, our objective was to build the team chemistry and the system … so far we have been getting positive results,” Refugia said. “But as we said, there is still a lot of work to do.”
Tagaod did not forget to thank FEU’s former mentor who had migrated to the United States after just a season with Far Eastern.
“Coach Tina, I hope you are proud of us,” Tagaod said.