Coach Haydee Ong, Tantoy Ferrer and the UST Growling Tigers have fun UAAP Season 86 girls’s basketball title. –MARLO CUETO/INQUIRER.internet
This season was like no different for the College of Santo Tomas (UST) girls’s basketball squad.
There’s that little factor about profitable the UAAP girls’s basketball crown for the primary time in practically twenty years and ending a seven-year dynasty of the magnificent Nationwide U Girl Bulldogs.
After which there are the opposite unfamiliar, however much-welcomed, elements.
On the finish of every season, the Tigresses typically break up into particular person holidays, being with household for nevertheless brief a interval is allowed earlier than they return to camp.
This time, nevertheless, an invite shoehorned an occasion into their calendars.
“First time, sure,” UST champion coach Haydee Ong instructed the Inquirer late Monday night throughout the Collegiate Press Corps (CPC) Awards Night time. “And I’m so joyful.”
Kent Pastrana and Tantoy Ferrer, two of Ong’s high weapons, have been ecstatic, too. Even when they walked into the Discovery Suites ballroom making an attempt to determine what on this planet they have been doing there.
“Why did I turn out to be part of this? Why am I right here?” Pastrana stated, laughing.
“Once I entered the room, plenty of [journalists] interviewed me. It’s like, I’m right here, they’re right here, that is enjoyable,” Ferrer added.
The CPC gave them purpose to be there. Ong, Pastrana and Ferrer have been honored by the group that covers collegiate sports activities, which for the primary time included girls’s basketball in its roster of awardees due to “the group’s mandate and imaginative and prescient, slowly and one after the other, of increasing our awards night time to as many sports activities as attainable for inclusivity and equity.”
“We began by feting solely the achievers from the staple occasions equivalent to males’s basketball and, final 12 months, girls’s volleyball for the primary time however we intend to honor extra as all athletes merely deserve it. We’re humbled to be the stage for that,” the CPC added Saturday in a press release offered to the Inquirer.
Constructing on momentum
The three Thomasians used the CPC’s stage to additional push girls’s basketball into the mainstream consciousness.
“I’m an advocate, not just for girls’s basketball, however usually, [for] girls in sports activities,” Ong stated. “So, yeah, this (the CPC occasion) is [removing] obstacles for girls in sports activities. So, we’re very joyful that we have been being acknowledged and honored tonight.”
Ong was named UAAP girls’s basketball coach of the 12 months whereas Pastrana received the inaugural girls’s collegiate basketball participant of the 12 months. Ferrer joined Pastrana within the UAAP girls’s basketball legendary choice.
“I didn’t know there was an award like this,” Pastrana stated.
“As a lady who performs, [being honored] feels actually good,” Ferrer stated. “We really feel impressed as a result of we get to [help] individuals admire how girls’s basketball performs.”
In receiving their awards, the Tigresses burdened the significance of constructing on the momentum generated by one of the crucial watched seasons of their self-discipline. For the primary time, girls’s basketball video games within the UAAP packed venues with screaming followers. And becoming a member of the standard CPC roster of honorees brightens the highlight.
“Ladies’s basketball is changing into increasingly well-liked,” Pastrana stated. “It’s thrilling to observe as a result of you may see plenty of physicality that many suppose isn’t there as a result of girls are those taking part in.”
And the Tigresses hope to push that showcase additional.
“We have to proceed displaying that we play arduous and that we’re at all times competing,” Ferrer stated.
For Ong, using the wave means giving audiences extra venues to observe girls’s basketball outdoors of the collegiate scene.
“I feel [we need] the consistency of different leagues, not simply UAAP, even in preseason, proper? Like, we’ve got video games in G-Ball or Manila Cup,” Ong stated. “There are [people] who’re stay streaming [the games]. I feel these are the mandatory platforms for girls’s basketball.”
For now, the honors bestowed on them will push the Tigresses to work even more durable.
“I received’t let this chance go to waste. This can be an inspiration for me,” Pastrana stated. “I feel we’re additionally an inspiration to different youngsters.”
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“This isn’t just for me,” Ong stated of her award. “[This is] additionally for the ladies coaches who’re dreaming to be acknowledged for girls’s basketball. I feel it’s one thing they will aspire for, being the Collegiate Press Corps Coach of the Yr.”
