Alas coach apologizes for early exit
ALAS Pilipinas head coach Taka Minowa and his crew look to salvage a decent finish in the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games women’s volleyball competition after bombing out of the quarterfinal seat race.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF PNVF
With its medal hopes shattered, Alas Pilipinas shifts its sights for at least a decent finish in the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games women’s volleyball competition.
The Filipinas suffered a group stage exit after a winless run in Pool B following their losses to defending champion China and Kazakhstan.
Relegated in the classification round, Alas shoots for a sweep of its next three games to land at ninth place in the 14-nation event.
“It’s really sad. I’m really sorry to everyone that this happened, but we will change our motivation and also the target — which is we’re going to finish 9th,” Alas head coach Taka Minowa vowed after the Philippines got the boot at the hands of Kazakhstan, 29-27, 24-26, 23-25, 19-25, on Thursday at the Okazaki Chuo Sogo Park Gymnasium.
Alas will return to action on Sunday after a two-day break, including a halt of hostilities today for the formal opening ceremonies.
“We (should) win three games in a row. That’s what we should do with this Asian Games,” the Japanese mentor added.
Alas, which is on its comeback run in the quadrennial continental spots meet since an eighth-place finish in the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang edition, was swept by the three-peat-seeking Chinese, 18-25, 22-25, 8-25, last Wednesday.
Team captain Jia Morado-de Guzman, the last remnant of the 2018 team that reached the quarterfinal, is seeking to salvage some measure of pride with a strong finish.
“Thankfully, we have two days to rest and recover. So, we have time to reset, review our game and try to improve from those two games that we’ve played. Of course, we want to finish strong,” the veteran playmaker said.
“We want as much as possible to win three games in a row. But we’ll take it one game at a time. Right now, coach Taka told us to focus on our recovery,” she added.
Top winger Angel Canino, who averaged 19 points in the pool play, hopes to bring the lessons learned of the young Alas crew in its first two games into their next matches.
“We’ll bring the experience of playing against the tough and taller opponents we went up against. We’ll look out lapses as a team and improve on that,” she said.