FOR SOMEBODY who has witnessed first hand how the Tigers roared to four straight UAAP titles 10 years ago and then fell headlong into the doldrums the following years, I must admit I didn’t really expect a major upheaval from my alma mater this year. I was covering the other collegiate league and wasn’t really paying attention to the heroic march of UST over at the UAAP. But that was until they shot down the proud Eagles despite a typhoid-plagued lineup in the eliminations. I did some interviews and came up with a short feature about it. So at least I had a small contribution in the Inquirer’s coverage of UST’s feat.
Listen, I covered the 14-game sweep of 1993 on my very first UAAP coverage straight from college, when the fire I felt for my university was still burning furiously. There was some point in the coverage when I didn’t know what I was there for. I was both rooting for UST and at the same time following the dictates of journalistic tenets of balance and fairplay.
I probably did a good job that year, that my editor sent me back to witness the “back-to-back” of 1994. Then the “three-peat” of 1995. And finally, the “four-ward” of 1996 that put a fitting finale to that glorious dynasty.
But was that really 10 years ago?
Look how time flies.
On a personal level, 1996 was also a great year for me. After some belt-tightening, I was able to buy my very first car that year. A red 1989 Mitsubishi Lancer GLX, second-hand, but it worked fine. In four years we shared together, it never failed to bring me home safe and sound, whether I was drunk or sober.
I also got my first European assignment later that year, the World Universities Taekwondo Championships in the breathtaking city of St. Petersburg, Russia. On the cobbled footsteps of the former Soviet military camp where we stayed, we drank local beer that slowly turns ice-cold amid sub-zero temperature.
And around that time, also, I was starting to seriously think about marrying Vangie.
Funny when I think about it, it seemed that when something good is happening for UST, something equally special is also taking place in my domestic life. Without a doubt, that four-peat is strung up together with some of my fondest memories.
The following UAAP season, for some reason I was taken off the collegiate beat. That was 1997. I remembered the year well but I couldn’t care less who won the championship. All I cared about was that UST never tasted a championship the next decade when I was hands-off from the UAAP assignment.
The years marched on and I started raising a family. Nothing spectacular happened to me except for the birth of my daughters Mavi and Maxi in 2000 and 2002.
In a strange parallelism, during that time the Tigers were in hibernation. Deep in slumber in some frozen tundra. Their belly still full of the four straight titles and thereby not yet feeling any need to wake up and hunt.
Suddenly, what once used to be the UAAP bully has been reduced to a class clown. Nobody gave them a chance in the pre-season. There were no budding superstars. An untested Pido Jarencio was at the helm. And I was assigned the NCAA. Everything seemed to have conspired against my team.
But needless to say, the UST team of 2006 went straight into the storm and came out of it drenched in victory and clutching the crown that many thought would fit Ateneo or University of the East better.
Unthinkable, yet it provided a fairy tale ending to the bedtime story. A Cinderella finish. A magical twist of fate. The day of the underdogs. A Swan-Lake moment. An extreme makeover. Throw in all the cliches we, Thomasians, can think of. They all apply to this happy event.
Marc Anthony Reyes is an AB Journalism graduate of the UST Faculty of Arts and Letters, batch 1992. He is now a senior sports writer of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
