The Women's Volleyball tournament of the UAAP season 77 started last November and the first round was completed earlier today in incredible fashion: last year's finalists Ateneo and La Salle squared off in the last game of the first round and played a nailbiting five-set match. True to form, defending champion Ateneo edged La Salle to sweep the first round.
The story of the season, however, has been the amazing improvement of UP. For the first time since I started watching the televised games, UP managed to win three games during the season. In the last two years, they ended with only two wins for the entire season and they have now exceeded that in just the first round. More than that, they are in a three-way tie for 4th, with FEU and Adamson sharing a 3-4 win-loss standing. In fact, UP, FEU, Adamson, NU (at 4-3) and even UST (at 2-5) all have the ability of beating each other this season as can be seen in the results: UP beat UST, UST beat Adamson, Adamson beat FEU, FEU beat NU, and NU beat UP. Those five teams have all to play for in the second round and it will be immensely interesting to see which teams will eventually move into the final four.
The only trouble for UP now is that one of their star players, Kathy Bersola, who was last season's best blocker, suffered an ACL injury in UP's last match, an extremely difficult win over Adamson in four sets. (The scores in the last two sets were an unbelievable 29-27 and 34-32!) Kathy is now out for the season but hopefully someone else in the team can step up. It would be absolutely awesome if UP can make it to the final four. And given how challenging it is for athletes to get back from ACL injuries, I just hope Kathy Bersola recovers quickly and gets back to full, or close to full, health.
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