Blu Girls seek to end Asiad heartbreak
THE national softball team is shifting its focus on the 20th Asian Games following a strong performance in the 33rd Southeast Asian Games recently.
Photo courtesy POC MEIDA POOL
THE national softball team is shifting its focus on the 20th Asian Games following a strong performance in the 33rd Southeast Asian Games recently.
Photo courtesy POC MEIDA POOL
The Philippine Blu Girls hope to end their heartbreak in the Asian Games.
With renewed spirit, the team is looking to finally clinch a podium finish in the 20th edition of the quadrennial showcase set in Nagoya, Japan from 19 September to 4 October.
Thrice in the past, the Blu Girls made the semifinals and were all in contention in the battle for the bronze.
And thrice too, their bid to reach the podium were all denied.
“This Asian Games, we promise ourselves that our tears will be happy tears this time,” said team captain Charlotte Sales, who was joined by co-captain Royevel Palma and assistant coach Rizza Bernardino during the Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum at the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) media room on Tuesday.
“The last time in Hangzhou in 2023, we were all heartbroken because we lost the bronze medal match,” she recalled of the team’s painful 3-2 defeat at the hands of Chinese Taipei.
But the entire team of 12 local players and five Filipino-Americans are determined to break the jinx this time.
“We aren’t losing hope. We are working really hard to achieve our goal of a podium finish,” added Palma, who was part of both national squads that fell short in Jakarta in 2018 and Hangzhou in 2023.
Bernardino, a former Blu Girl herself, announced in the same Forum presented by San Miguel Corporation, PSC, Philippine Olympic Committee, MILO, and the country’s 24/7 sports app ArenaPlus, that the team is slated to hold another training camp in Japan prior to its stint in the Asiad.
The Blu Girls are coming off a fifth-place finish in the just concluded WBSC Women’s Softball World Cup in Peru, Lima in a performance that was also enhanced by a similar training camp in Japan.
“The training camp went really well because the team showed a lot of improvement. The Japanese team taught us so much. They were unselfish in sharing their skills and anything else that could help us,” Bernardino said.
Currently training at the Polo Club, the Blu Girls will leave for the training camp on 21 August, after which they will go straight to Nagoya for the softball competitions that kick off on 26 September.
As expected, the host country is the favorite to win a seventh straight gold since bagging its first during the 2002 Busan Asiad.
The format remains the same, according to Bernardino, where the eight teams play a single round robin and then the top four will advance to the semis.
Other countries seeing action aside from the host and the Philippines are Chinese Taipei, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.
