STI College Olympians Volleyball Team wins

The STI College Olympians barely made it to the semi – finals last year as the Our Lady of Fatima University Phoenix shut down their final four hopes by carving out a close 5 set victory that all but halted the hopes of the Olympians for a banner year. As they say, revenge is best served cold as the Olympians bucked a slow start to avenge last year’s loss with an opening day win against the same team 20 - 25, 25-15, 25 -22, 25 - 22 for their first win in the NAASCU opening in four years.

Ponce and Amontos thwart a Phoenix spike

The Olympians relied on the high flying duo of third year BS Computer Engineering high flyer John Ric Amontos and BS HRM Senior Junior Ponce. The two connived to quell every rally mounted by the stubborn Phoenix team. Ably backing up the two are Third year BS Information Technology tosser Rezile Lazaro, Sophomore Computer Science Major striker Jeric Rosas, sophomore BS HRM Rookie Dan Marasigan and, BS Business Management Senior and the Captain Mark Reaño. The six were instrumental in putting the first win for the Olympians in the new season.

Dan Marasigan flies high

The Olympians started tentatively as they got into a maze of errors as the opening day jitters slowly ate them up as their veterans were quite tense which gave the Phoenix a 15 – 8 lead. The Olympians eventually woke up, rallied, lost the first set but eventually got better and there was no denying them the hard earned win over their 2011 tormentors. The game was close in the third and fourth sets with the Olympians showing their poise under pressure by winning the last two sets after both coming from 22 - all ties.

Jeric Rosas on the move

In the other games, CEU and AMA Computer University got twin kills by beating their respective opponents in the Men’s and Women’s division. The Scorpions beat opening day loser City University of Pasay while their Lady Scorpions beat the STI College Lady Olympians. Newly formed Informatics International College suffered twin losses against the AMA Computer University Titans as their Men’s and Women’s Team both got a rude welcome from the Titans. The St Clare College Saints got a split as their women’s team won over the Our Lady of Fatima University Phoenix while venue host New Era University Hunters beat the Men’s team of the Saints. The Titans lead the Men's Division with two wins while CEU, St. Clare and AMA are tied with one win in the distaff side.

Tosser Rezille Lazaro and Jeric Rosas on the block

STI Volleyball Men's Team finally wins

JR Ponce serving

Height is something that Daniel Trinidad, a third year spiker out of STI College Taft was not blessed. But even though he lacked stature he surely made up for it with his big heart and determination to win. He is the only remnant of the STI College Team that started three seasons ago and his spunk and heart rubbed off on his team mate as he was a big part in the Olympians conquest over the University of Makati Hardy Herons. It was the first win of the Olympians in three years.

Amontos and Blazo block the Herons

The Olympians started slow mainly because some of their main guns arrived late. In the second set, the Hardy Herons erected a 17 - 10 lead and looked poised to take that set too. Unfortunately for them,spikers JR Ponce and John Amontos took turns in blocking the hits of the Herons and they themselves combined to give the surging Olympians the lead and eventually overtake the Herons to take the second set by a whisker 25 - 23.

Synchronized Jumping

The Hardy Herons battled back in the third set. They adjusted their attack since most of their spikes were blocked by the big men of the Olympians. Their gambled payed off as they yielded only a few points and got the Olympians mixed up who found it hard to react to the new set of offensive patterns of the Hardy Herons. The result was a third set win and a 2 - 1 lead by the Hardy herons.

JR Ponce shows his stuff

Volleyball is a total team effort and the Olympians finally showed their team effort as Trinidad pierced the net, Rezile Lazaro set up the big boys, Team Captain Rhestie Blazo started to click while Ponce, Amontos and Cleng Bascarra ignited a big run to capture the fourth set. The team also held their grown as their momentum carried them to a 15 - 11 fifth set win to give the Olympians breathing ground and more importantly the confidence as they battle their next two opponents.

Bascarra and Ponce solidify the STI wall

Finally the Olympians are not the whipping boys of the NAASCU Volleyball anymore and are set to improve on their previous stints as they finally nailed that ever elusive first win. The Olympians need to beat the CEU Scorpions and OLFU Phoenix in their next two assignments to make it to the semifinal round. They dropped their first game against last year's finalist, the San Sebastian College Cavite Baycats. Go STI.

16th NYC in Tacloban

The TACLOBAN ASTRODOME

STI College Tacloban Performers
interpret the Invocation Hymn

The hosts open the convention
with a peformance

Microsoft's Robby Manubay
Explains Microsoft Live@edu

Ricky Bunag was well applauded

Jet Nera shared great stories

STIers sing the STI Hymn

Queenie Padilla entertains
her partner

Queenie laughs at my joke

STI College Olympians Volleyball Team Building

The STI College Olympians Volleyball teams have many good individual players but is still lacking on the chemistry side. The composition of the Men's Team should be able to spring a few surprises while the Women's team have their own concerns to worry about. In an effort to be able to build chemistry one has to be familiar with each other and eventually trust each other in the process. In comes the team building sessions to be able to develop and infuse the aforementioned components.

The STI College Olympians Volleyball Men's and Women's travelled to Los Baños Laguna for their first Team Building session. The goal was to be able to bond with each other and more importantly eliminate the small groups and clicks and become ONE TEAM. Admittedly the two teams are still far from that but as they say this can be the starting point.

For starters the Men's team who has lots of HRM students took care of the grilling of the food while the girls took care of the preparation of the tables, utensils and plates and other stuff. Coach Philip Salaysay facilitated the exact division of rice, liempo and other stuff to be able to have a nice boodle fight. After dinner we had some games that pitted the guys and the gals. It was nothing much but it helped the two teams know other details of their team mates.

The evening ended with some R & R with singing and enjoying each others company. We just hope that the bonds that were made in this Team Building will help each and everyone develop a good sense of chemistry that is needed to be able to create a fighting team. Go Olympians.

STI Volleyball - starting all over

There is a saying that goes - the first is always the hardest. Well that is true for the STI College Olympians Volleyball team as their first foray into an STI Volleyball program seems to be a long and winding road to respectability. Five years ago, STI College tapped its champion team STI College Sta. Rosa to represent the network in the NAASCU wars. The STI Sta. Rosa team did not disappoint for they placed respectably in the first year that they played and then eventually made it to the finals and lost out in a great battle against St. Clare College.

Things change, students graduate and new ones come along. Thus after those years the STI network started to tinker on the possibility of creating a manila based team. Unfortunately, since Volleyball is not really a sport that is played by a lot of people, it was hard to form a team with a limited budget to start with. Last year, STI College Taft helped out in creating a team for men and women. Again the lack of interest among a lot of students resulted in the formation of a men's team only. We did not even complete the women's team. The men lost all their 4 games.

This year became year one of the Volleyball program. The directive is to form a team and join the league knowing full well that the others member schools will have an easy time beating us considering the STI teams had just barely a month of practice and familiarity is quite hard since Volleyball really relies a lot on team play. We first wanted to create a team of students mainly from STI College Global City. Word came around and volleyball die hards from Taft and Quezon Avenue made it to the team final 12. The Men's team is composed of 12 players while the women's team had only 10 players.

As of this blog writing, our story was just like a well written script that both teams followed - both went down in straight sets in three games. Looking at how the teams played it all boiled down to familiarity and getting used to the competition. The lack of maturity showed and the team defense was indeed something the team will have to improve on. I told Coach Philip Salaysay, once a national team athletics member and a volleyball player then himself, that what the team needs is more tune up games in the future so that they can address the loopholes that we saw during the tournament.

Again, creating a respectable team that will compete at a high level in tournaments that you will enter requires a lot of seasoning and experience. By starting a team now, we hope that we can click the right buttons in getting the needed players and training them for the next season. The season is not year over but we hope to improve on this performance to be able to become competitive in the next two to three years. But unfortunately, until that time comes we have to swallow the bitter pill of watching our teams lose big time. GO STI...lets do it.

9th NAASCU Volleyball opening

STI Men's and Women's Volleyball Team

The National Athletic Association of schools Colleges and Universities opened the ninth season of its volleyball tournament. Defending champion University of Manila is favored to win the men’s division which will be joined by nine other teams. The Women’s division will be up for grabs since last year’s champion Holy Angel University will not join this year. Ten teams are also joining the women’s team of the NAASCU.

The OLFU Dancers dancing their winning piece

To add spice to the opening ceremonies, two new gimmicks were added to the delight of the crowd. One is the choosing of Ms. NAASCU Volleyball. This search is a simple look at NAASCU volleyball players and judges will look at who is the most beautiful among the NAASCU Volleybelles. Our Lady of Fatima University’s tall and beautiful spiker won the contest followed by CEU and PLP.

Ms. NAASCU Volleyball Winners (2nd - CEU, 1st- OLFU, 3rd PLP)

After that, instead of having the usual intermission number, the NAASCU held its first Hip Hop Dance competition. The schools that participated included AMA Computer University, Centro Escolar University , San Sebastian College Cavite, Our Lady of Fatima University, University of Manila and the University of Makati. Our Lady of Fatima was declared the winner followed by AMA Computer University and Centro Escolar University. Six other teams did not field their dance groups.

Volleyball action - UM won in straight sets