Alas stares death in the eye

The sea was supposed to enhance their brotherhood.

Instead, it served as a terrifying background of a tragedy that will forever haunt the members of the Ateneo de Manila University men’s basketball team for the rest of their lives.

Incoming rookie Kieffer Alas revisited their harrowing experience during their team-building activity that led to the deaths of Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili last week in Dipaculao, Aurora.

Speaking on “Let’s Talk with Pia Hontiveros” last Tuesday, the 21-year-old Alas stressed that they were greeted with strong waves and brutal winds during a water exercise that nearly led to their drowning.

“I was going to accept that I will be gone” an emotional Alas said, admitting that he has yet to recover from the trauma brought by one of the darkest moments in Philippine sports.

“My head wasn’t straight because I just didn’t know what to do. I was underwater, I guess, for more than 20 seconds. It felt like I had given up back then.”

Alas, who is not a good swimmer, said that it was purely a bonding activity — not an initiation rite as what some quarters are speculating on social media.

“No, not at all. It just hurts how people perceive it that way. I know my veterans wouldn’t even think of that,” said Alas, who broke his silence for the first time together with teammate Sam Reyes.

“They wouldn’t do that to me or any of the other rookies. It’s just hard to see it online.”

Reyes added that they kept the incident to themselves to give the Ateneo school officials, their management team and their coaches more time to decide on their next course of action.

“At first, when the tragedy happened last Monday, our caches told us not to reveal it to anyone and let their (Baterbonia and Adili) parents know it first. So they wanted to inform the parents first before they learned about it on social media,” Reyes said.

“Rene was beside me and I felt that I could have done more to prevent him from drowning. It was eating me alive, and there were times when I was just awake.”

Meanwhile, Jared Bahay emphasized that the activity itself was never intended to be a swimming exercise. The water, according to the players, was supposed to remain shallow.

“The requirement was that the water should be knee to waist-deep. It should not go beyond that because we weren’t swimming,” Bahay said, adding that it was conducted to strengthen their lower bodies.