Bigger, livelier V-League in the works

The title playoff for the Shakey’s V-League women’s volleyball championship has barely started but event organizer Sports Vision Management Group, Inc. has already lined up an expanded second conference scheduled this coming November.

SVMGI board member Sonny Barrios yesterday announced that the November tourney would probably involve eight teams, two more than the six that competed in its pilot project, with each carrying the banners of would-be corporate sponsors.

"Talks are already going on between us and the prospective sponsors and that if plans materialize, we might be having an ideal eight-team field in line with our objective of reviving the sport of volleyball and regain the status we once enjoyed in the Asian and Southeast Asian scenes," Barrios, the former PBA executive director, said during yesterday’s SCOOP Sa Kamayan weekly session.

"Several teams have already approached us, including Ateneo, and if they can be able to measure up to the standard of play the present six-team cast has displayed, then the possibility of adding one or two is not that remote," he told his audience during the session, sponsored by Photokina Marketing and Triple V Group of Companies.

Teams that competed in the initial tournament are UAAP champion La Salle, runner-up Far Eastern and University of Santo Tomas, San Sebastian and Letran in the NCAA and WNCAA titlist Lyceum, with the Lady Archers and the Growling Tigresses currently locked in the best-of-three playoff for the crown.

UST took Game One, 17-25, 25-21, 25-16, 25-16.

UST coach August Sta. Maria and his La Salle counterpart Ramil de Jesus also appeared in the public service forum along with Growling Tigresses Bridget Inoferio, Mary Jane Balse, Melissa de la Cruz and karen Co Yu Kang and Lady Archers Nicole Ann Remulla, Maureen Penetrante, Manila Santos and Desiree Hernandez. Also present was tournament director Tony Boy Liao.

Sta. Maria and De Jesus both expressed confidence of stashing away with the crown although they added that winning the plum is not that important than being involved in the move to revive public and corporate interest in the sport.

Incidentally, the Tigresses won the opening of the best-of-three series, 17-25, 25-21, 25-16 Thursday with the Lady Archers eyeing to tie the playoff tomorrow at the Lyceum gym.

Also appearing in the session were coaches Manny Llave and Edgar Lariosa of the Smokey Mountain baseball team and their players who recently romped off with the Manila Youth Games elementary boys’ baseball crown.

Llave, who also coaches the Antonio Villegas Technical High School team disclosed that the formation of the team is just a start of his group’s ambitious program to help elevate the standard of living of Tondo’s depressed area through sports.

His boys, he said, John Patrick Glriano, April Ignacio, Anthony Madroya, Bryan James de Mesa, Paul Francis Macarenas, Mark Louis Albuera, Mark Leynard Ignacio, Rolly Rosa Caso, Jermone Riparip, Joey Pallion, Richard Mabale, Wilson Pamolas and Vincent Arcenas are sons of scavengers and dock hands either at the former garbage dumping ground or at the North and South Harbors.

Part of the program, Llave added, is to give the boys and those coming after them better education through the help of Manila Sports Council chair Ali Atienza and provide them jobs when they finished schooling.