SHE IS volleyball’s poker-faced, black-gold-white figure who hardly rides the emotional bandwagon whenever relief or dismay confronts her play.
Despite lacking the flair and swagger of many superstars in the UAAP volleyball circuit, UST Spiker and Season 69 MVP Venus Bernal has never failed to silently deliver the goods at crunchtime. Should she score or commit a mistake during play, she tells herself to “keep it cool”, and either UST wins or lose, she uses it as a motivation to win the next time around.
Case in point: the lanky 5-foot-11 stalwart punctured the Far Eastern University (FEU) Lady Tamaraws’ defense, marking a 5-0 lead third-set lead to eventually end UST’s decade-old search for the UAAP championship.
“Malakas lang talaga ang team namin,” she told the Varsitarian after being asked how she felt being named as an MVP.
Bernal, the smiling and towering open spiker, along with Angeli Tabaquero and Mary Jean Balse, took the UAAP Volleyball by storm. She and her comrades lorded over Adamson University, blitzed pass the Lady Bulldogs, and then confronted FEU’s Lady Tamaraws in the finals with a 25-11, 25-22, 25-19 win.
Bernal led the Lady Spikers in scoring (19.3 ppg), enough for the UAAP volleyball bigwigs to give her the prestigious MVP title. She has also now become a part of the national team along with San Sebastian College stalwart Cherry Rose Macatangay, whom she idolized in the spike-and-stop discipline.
Destiny
Everything fell into place for Bernal after she realized her natural volleyball prowess. At the Imus Institute of Cavite, she was the shy high school girl who smashed her way to fame by winning different ball contests as an open spiker.
Like a predestined encounter, UST coach August Santamaria spotted Bernal in one of her high school tournaments. He immediately invited her to play for UST, assigning her as an open-spiker.
“Luckily, I was assigned to be an open-spiker for the team here in UST, just as I have always wanted,” she said.
A player’s life
Asked about how she balances her work as a student and an athlete, Bernal said that it is only a matter of studying as hard as playing.
“There were really stressful times that although I wanted to listen to the lecture, I still would to fall asleep,” the third-year Commerce student explained.
With conflicting schedules for exams and games, it’s a wonder how she still manages to deliver the goods as an athlete and a student at the same time.
“Para kang papasok sa butas ng karayom, pero kinakaya ko,” she said.
Apart from a daily rigorous training from 6-9 p.m., the team trains even on weekends when competitions like UAAP and V-League are just around the corner.
As for naysayers who claim that UST won the championship because La Salle was suspended, Bernal said that the Lady Spikers are pretty much confident to give Lady Archers a run for their money come Season 70, citing teamwork as their main weapon to win games.
“Teamwork is a big lift for us because we help each other to execute our plays as perfectly as we can,” she said of the Lady Spikers, who stormed past FEU and La Salle in last year’s University Games in Bacolod City and the ongoing Shakey’s V-League, respectively.
But at the end of the day, prestige and glamour inevitably come along for Bernal and UST’s wins. She, however, says that having these distinctions should not make a braggart out of UST.
“Winning should not limit one’s humility, but should equip one for greater tasks and glorious finishes ahead,” she said. Heinz Jassen D. Brobo
