IT was my wife Marissa’s birthday last Tuesday and there was no way for me to make it to the Foton-Cignal game in Bacoor that night.
The personal risk to my life would have been too much for me had I told her that I will leave the house that night just to watch a volleyball game instead of staying with her in the house on her natal day. So I did the next best thing possible, I watched the game live on the big screen in the relative safety of our home and saw Foton’s Jaja Santiago playing her best game in the match that I told earlier the Foton players was a must-win game for them in their quest for lost glory.
Prior to the game, Foton was at 3-3 and going into the second round with a winning record would be a good motivation and I believe the team and the players took it to heart.
After losing an extended first set, Foton took the next three sets with Jaja taking over in the second set and leading her team to an impressive come-from-behind victory in the set. She then sustained her dominating performance in the next two sets that all but crushed the spirit of Cignal.
It was truly a different Jaja that night as she showed and applied what she had learned from her stint as an import in Japan where definitely the level of play is higher than ours. Gone was the ever smiling face, in its place was her serious game face, focused only on one thing, rally her team to victory, blocking opponents at the net with regularity and scoring with unstoppable power spikes in a team up with setter Gyzelle Sy.
The bonus was that it was not an all-Jaja show for Foton in their last three games as they have won successively against PLDT, Marinerang Pilipina and Cignal. It was a total team effort as coach Aaron Velez shuffled his players with dexterity, using practically the whole team most of the time with each player fielded responding well.
And volleyball fans, Foton supporters in particular, also saw what they have been waiting for a long time to witness with Jaja and her Ate Dindin playing together at their best at the same time following the return to form of Dindin from a knee injury and other earlier injuries that kept her on the bench most of the time since she transferred to Foton.
As Coach Aaron told me, the Santiago sisters pushed each other to be at each other’s best without any indication of a sibling rivalry at all. In fact, after each game, he would hear the sisters dissecting the game and discuss what should have been done, this aside from being obsessed with conditioning.
On her part, Jaja said she is even more inspired now, playing together with her sister. This was after seeing her Ate Dindin go through a lot of difficult things that could have made lesser players give up.
Dindin, who is famous and feared by her teammates for her Simang Look, a.k.a Simangot Look, admitted to me that now she feels she is already contributing to her team with the bonus of doing it with her younger sister. The duo has been leading the team in scoring averages consistently.
She also agrees that Jaja is the better player with the caveat of “for now” as she looks at working on her improvement areas in her game with the common dream for the siblings to play abroad.
A working Jaja-Dindin tandem and getting solid support from its teammates are certainly something to watch in the ongoing Philippine Super Liga All Filipino Conference and I will try to watch as many games as I can, my schedule permitting.
By the way, as I have thrown away already my not-so-trusty crystal ball after the NBA season, I can only give an educated guess for the PSL. The top two slots will be reserved for F2 Logistics and defending champion Petron. The two remaining slots for the semifinals will be contested by Foton, Generika-Ayala and Cignal with Foton having the inside track, then Cignal over Generika-Ayala.
What happens after that, I will dare to guess after watching the games in the second round.