PVL: Cait Viray flourishing in new role for Farm Fresh

Farm Fresh’s Cait Viray.– PVL PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Cait Viray has embraced a new and bigger outside spiker role for Farm Fresh in the 2024 PVL Reinforced Conference.

Viray delivered 18 points including five blocks to star in Farm Fresh’s come-from-behind 25-22, 35-37, 23-25, 25-20, 15-10 victory and snap a two-game skid in Pool A on Tuesday at Philsports Arena.

Viray, who was sharing the opposite spiker role with Trisha Tubu in the All-Filipino Conference, has been converted to a starting outside spiker, entailing a bigger responsibility for her young team.

READ: PVL: Yeny Murillo lifts Farm Fresh over Galeries for first win

Thanks to her coaches, the former University of Santo Tomas Tigress has been thriving in her new role.

“There are a lot of adjustments, especially in my new position. But my coaches are there to help us,” said Viray in Filipino.

The wing spiker transferred from Choco Mucho to Farm Fresh early this season. But her adjustment continued as coach Shota Sato and other Japanese coaches took over midway through the season.

Although it’s more challenging, Viray is grateful to her coaches for honing their skills despite the language barrier.

“It’s harder because I have more things to do [this conference]. But my coaches are always there to guide us in training. They make it easier for us because they’re hands-on,” she said. 

READ: PVL: Finding balance between Tubu, Viray key for Farm Fresh

Sato admitted that coaching a Philippine team is a challenging task but his players make life easier for him. 

“It was a very hard decision [to accept Farm Fresh’s offer]. There’s a lot of pressure on my end to carry the load as head coach for this Farm Fresh team. My players are also helping me learn Tagalog and English so it was easy to adjust,” said the new Farm Fresh coach through an interpreter.

After entering the win column, Sato hopes his team will learn from the good and bad things they saw before taking on Nxled on Saturday.

Viray agreed: “We had a lot of lapses, especially in the end game but we’re still happy with this win. We still have a lot of things to work on so we’ll keep on working.”