Gilas Pilipinas Girls roster for SEA Video games 2023. –FRANCIS OCHOA/INQUIRER
Two Southeast Asian Video games gold medals later, the Gilas Pilipinas girls’s staff nonetheless performs like a staff on a mission.
“We nonetheless wish to show ourselves,” staff captain Janine Pontejos instructed the Inquirer lately.
Show what precisely?
That they’re precisely the place they belong, reigning as “queens of Southeast Asia,” Jack Animam mentioned. That they’re a testomony to the basketball courtroom being a lady’s playground too. That they deserve an entire lot extra love and help in a rustic that supposedly reveres the game to non secular heights.
“You already know we’re working actually, actually arduous—as arduous, if no more, as some other staff right here within the Philippines. We’ve proven time and time once more that we should be supported,” guard Ella Fajardo mentioned.
The staff will fly to Cambodia on the lookout for a 3rd straight SEA Video games basketball crown and proof that the nation hasn’t absolutely embraced the squad but is that the basketball information cycle continues to be going loopy over the shortcoming of the boys’s squad to carry practices with an entire pool.
That places an added duty on the shoulders of the Gilas girls.
And it’s a duty that Afril Bernardino embraces greater than wholeheartedly.
“One of many questions I all the time get requested is why I proceed to play; why I proceed to struggle,” the 27-year-old veteran ahead mentioned.
“There’s my household and God, after all,” added Bernardino, probably the most skillfully gifted gamers on the staff. “However I actually wish to construct basketball for ladies. I wish to do that for ladies. I actually consider basketball isn’t only for males. That’s why we hold making an attempt to show ourselves. That’s the place I draw my power, from that perception that basketball isn’t only for males, but in addition for ladies.”
That aim goes hand-in-hand with the staff making an attempt to maintain the nation on the prime of the area.
–FRANCIS OCHOA/INQUIRER
So long as the ladies hold ruling the SEA Video games, they hold their relevance excessive. In 2019, when the staff gained the gold on the identical night time the boys additionally triumphed, then nationwide coach Tim Cone mentioned: “[The women] are the story tonight, not us.”
For a program that has skilled languishing exterior of the rostrum so lately that a few of the members of the staff had lived by way of it, it’s comprehensible that the ladies wish to stay the story.
“This group is so particular,” Jack Animam, the staff’s prime gun, mentioned. “We noticed this system from [its] lowest and we’re so blissful to be right here. [And now that] we’re already right here … we wish extra.”
“Like considered one of our seniors instructed us, we’re already right here. Let’s not fall again to the underside as a result of it’s a burden emotionally [to return to losing]. So let’s work arduous [to retain our position],” middle Clare Castro mentioned.
“I’ve been there (throughout the shedding years),” Bernardino added. “I used to be with the staff in 2015, and it harm rather a lot, all of the losses within the SEA Video games. In 2017, similar factor. However in 2019, that’s once we constructed our braveness to struggle and ensure we now not really feel that form of harm. I don’t wish to really feel that harm anymore. That’s why I all the time give it the whole lot I’ve and encourage the staff that we have to have a single outlook.”
That’s why, too, there’s an added starvation inside the staff to stay champions.
“We wish to hold it that approach (being on prime). It’s not only for us. It’s for the basketball neighborhood within the Philippines, particularly the subsequent era,” Animam mentioned.
Like all noble intentions, nevertheless, profitable a 3rd straight gold—and propping girls’s basketball within the course of—won’t be straightforward. There will probably be no scarcity of groups in Cambodia trying to tear down the Filipinos.
“I instructed them each recreation goes to be a championship recreation,” mentioned coach Pat Aquino, probably the most sensible tacticians within the nation as we speak.
Aquino mentioned the Philippines’ rivals have been enjoying in a business league of types as a part of preparations to knock the crown off the Gilas girls’s head.
“They’ve been enjoying nearly six months already simply to organize for the Southeast Asian Video games,” Aquino mentioned of the match participated in by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
Nationwide staff coach Pat Aquino and the Gilas Pilipinas Girls. –FRANCIS OCHOA/INQUIRER
Unable to hitch the match, the Gilas girls’s program resorted to different methods to whip the nationwide staff in form—they scrimmaged towards boys’ groups, together with these from powerhouse highschool applications like Xavier.
“They’re extra aggressive generally. They’re extra aggressive,” guard Jhazmin Joson, a younger standout from Ateneo, mentioned. “They play higher so we study extra once we play with boys.”
The video games towards the boys had been performed at Aero Middle basketball health club in Quezon Metropolis. The staff practices there totally free courtesy of former La Salle Inexperienced Archer Lincoln Lim, a type of behind-the-scenes supporters of the ladies’s squad that, based on Aquino, “give what they’ll to help this system.”
Indonesia has additionally beefed up its program, retaining Canadian-Haitian Kim-Pierre Louis as its naturalized participant and organising camp in Australia. Malaysia, Aquino mentioned, has a brand new coach and a brand new system whereas Thailand has saved a younger crew collectively for a very long time.
However having come from the underside has given the Philippines a singular perspective on its title rivals.
“For the reason that starting, we’ve all the time been the underdogs so we all know how these different groups really feel,” mentioned Fajardo, a product of Fairleigh Dickinson College in New Jersey. “It’s nearly like we had that nothing to lose mentality so we already know what to anticipate, we already know the way the feelings are.
“Me and a few the rookies from final yr already know the way the SEA Video games goes. I believe now we have sufficient expertise even emotionally so I believe that actually helps us.”
That have has steeled the Filipinos for regardless of the opposition will throw at them.
“I do know that it’s not going to be straightforward. Our opponents will not be simply going to roll [over] and die,” Animam mentioned. “It’s going to be a dogfight and we are going to struggle for it and show that we’re now the queens of Southeast Asia.”
“We’re prepared,” Bernardino added. “The joy is there. Stress? After all, we’re back-to-back [champions] and this [SEA Games], there will probably be stress [to defend the title]. However our togetherness is there. [We remind ourselves] to not be defeated by the stress and as a substitute, assist one another out to get the gold.”
What they don’t want a reminder of is the opposite onus they bear. It’s one thing even program newcomers like Joson are very a lot conscious of.
“There’s that duty, particularly to those who’re watching Gilas, the youthful era,” Joson mentioned. “This group of gamers, we attempt to set an instance that we’re not simply women who play basketball. We’re making an attempt to show to everybody that we are able to additionally play the game—to indicate the youthful ones that something is feasible.”
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