WOUNDED in the initial round of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), the UST Growling Tigers as expected roared back in the second round to win its 31st General Championship, making University of the Philippines and De La Salle University eat their dust with a commanding and unreachable 28-point advantage.
The Tigers easily wiped out DLSU’s big 18-point lead in the second round. Their double victory in Table Tennis at the end of the first round provided the spark. The Tiger Judokas and Jins followed that up with their own twin kills at the start of the second half of the season.
With eight bridesmaid runs and five third-place finishes, the Tigers pulled away from the rest of the field as they once again asserted their might in the premiere collegiate sports fest in the country.
The second semester teams delivered the bulk of the points. Besides the title romps in taekwondo and judo, tennis, baseball, softball, men’s badminton and women fencing teams narrowly missed the championships.
The Tigers’ worst finish was in men’s basketball where they missed the Final Four for the second time in three years and ended up a lowly sixth place.
Sans the men’s basketball title they last held in ’97 season, UST recorded its 21st UAAP General Championship in the last 22 years. With 31 overall titles since the UAAP started in 1938, UST is the undisputed general champion in collegiate sports in the country.
The glorious and almost continuous general-championship run of UST in the last 22 years was only dented in the ’98 season when UP wrested the over-all plum by a slim margin of five points. Since then, UST has never looked back.
In the just-concluded season, UST stashed away a total of 286 points. UP and DLSU came in tied at second place with 258 points each. University of the East (180), Far Eastern University (170), Ateneo de Manila University (169), Adamson University (92) and National University (16) followed the perennial top three schools. Alder T. Almo
