We feel that we uplifted the state of men’s volleyball in the country.

TEAM captain Johnvic de Guzman (2nd from left) celebrates his silver medal with Ricky Marcos, Jack Kalingking and Joshua Umandal. DAVID JOHN CUBANGBANG @tribunephl_dvd

It may have lost the gold medal, but the impact that the national men’s volleyball team made outweighed whatever gem offered during the country’s hosting of the 30th Southeast Asian (sea) Games.

Team captain Johnvic de Guzman said they were happy with the outcome of their campaign despite absorbing a straight-set loss to Indonesia in the gold-medal match late Tuesday at the Philsports Arena.

For one, they made history by making it to the finals of the SEA Games for the first time in 42 years and served as a ray of hope in the winless campaign of the national women’s team.

Aside from that, they managed to attract nearly 7,000 spectators to the venue, proving that men’s volleyball can actually stand toe to toe with the highly-popular, heavily-commercialized women’s squad.

“Our feat was sweet even if we didn’t get the gold medal,” said de Guzman, the former National Collegiate Athletic Association Most Valuable Player (MVP) who made a huge sacrifice when he took a step back in favor of Marck Espejo and Bryan Bagunas.

“We feel that we uplifted the state of men’s volleyball in the country.”

Men’s volleyball has been pretty much neglected.

Since the formation of the Larong Volleyball sa Pilipinas Inc. in 2015, at least three coaches already handled the squad with no solid program in place.

Ateneo de Manila University coach Oliver Almadro was the first to handle the team, finishing sixth in the 28th edition of the biennial meet in Singapore.

Seasoned mentor Sammy Acaylar had his turn, but he also crashed out of the medal podium, tying with Malaysia in the fifth spot of the eight-team field in the 29th SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur.

Then, Dante Alinsunurin was appointed, hoping to rub the success of National University in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) to an overwhelming win in the international arena.

Alinsunurin came in with a lot of promises.

He is a 39-year-old mentor from the Philippine Air Force who was part of the last Philippine squad that emerged with a medal in the biennial meet during the country’s previous hosting in 2005.

He immediately buckled down to work tapping the country’s most promising spikers and mixed them with a couple of veterans like Jessie Lopez and Mark Alfafara.

For good measure, he added Espejo while tapping Bagunas, who was playing in Japan as import for Oita Miyoshi Weisse Adler in the prestigious V.Premier League.

There wasn’t any fanfare in their buildup.

They trained almost daily in the sweltering gym of Arellano University School of Law from March up to November. Then, they flew to Japan for a 16-day buildup where they faced various club and university teams in Tokyo.

Upon their return, there was no pocket tourney or friendly matches to speak of. Instead, they trained among themselves until they got everything right.

That’s why in the SEA Games, when the going got tough, they knew that they have nobody to lean on but themselves.

After losing to Indonesia in the preliminaries, they bounced back with a miraculous win over reigning champion Thailand in a thrilling five-set showdown in the semifinals.

And with history already achieved, the national spikers faced the Indonesians in the finals anew before settling for a shining silver medal.

“We had nothing to lose. We were not thinking about getting pressured,” said Espejo, a five-time UAAP MVP for Ateneo de Manila University.

“But they really used their height advantage and experience to the fullest. We lost the match but, again, we are so grateful for that opportunity.”

Espejo added that they would train even hard to finally clinch the gold medal in the next edition of the Games in Vietnam.

Still, they are happy with what they got. It’s a silver that shines like gold.