Alabang, Eastridge gain in Fed League

MANILA, Philippines - Alabang and Eastridge stunned their favored rivals over the weekend to advance to the semifinals of the Men’s Federation League matches.

Alabang scored a come-from-behind 5.5-4.5 victory over Forest Hills while Eastridge walloped Royal Northwoods, 6.5-2.5, in a pair of quarterfinal matches that saw both two-time champions failing to advance to the Final Four.

In this week’s semifinals, Alabang takes on the top seeded eliminations topnotcher Wack Wack while Eastridge battles second ranked Valley. Both Wack Wack and Valley advanced to the semis outright by virtue of being the top two teams after the eliminations.

Valley will be gunning for a return trip to the finals after losing to Riviera last year against an Eastridge team hungry for its first crown. Alabang, meanwhile, will try to ride the momentum of its big semis win against Forest Hills when it faces a solid Wack Wack side.

Facing Forest Hills, Alabang took a 1.5-3.5 loss in the away format and was under heavy pressure to match that result at home.

But the Alabang squad did even better with a 4-1 victory capped by the 2&1 scramble win of Deo Aguinaldo and Jorge Gallent. Alabang took the easy points through Seve Roxas Chua-Basti Lorenzo in high-low and Dax Garcia-Quino Baterna in aggregate play. Caloy Coscolluela-JP Castrillo made it 3-0 by winning the greensomes point.

Tied 2-2 after the Northwoods leg. Eastridge went all out and got the crucial wins from the tandems of Ayi Beech-John Decena, Owen Lee-Dong Jin-tak, Patrick Solano-Jung soo-park and Sumio Watanabe-Junnel Roxas. Erwin Temena and Daniel Sarmiento barely pulled off a sweep for Eastridge and settled for a draw.