Tag: July 31

“WHAT won the general championship for us was not skill but heart.”

It was how athletic moderator Felix Michael Silbor described the University’s championship run in UAAP season 66.

This year, UST’s campaign for a 32nd UAAP title is faced with tough opposition from perennial title contenders University of the Philippines (UP) and De La Salle University (DLSU). Both schools were tied at second place last season registering 258 points, while UST garnered 284 points.

WHOEVER thought that Wimbledon, perhaps the most elite international lawn tennis tournament, is an impenetrable territory to Filipino athletes is sorely mistaken. A Filipino reached the exclusive Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships 24 years ago the second to do so since Johnny Jose. And he was a Thomasian.

TEN YEARS of high-octane dragon boat rowing.

For an international sports squad to survive this long even without the luxury of having a regular team sponsor or even a school to represent, it is correct to say that the Aqua Fortis Dragon Boat Rowing Team (AFDBRT) is truly a product of pure passion. In its 10 years of existence, this Thomasian-laden team has gone to restless bodies of water to pocket strings of medals and place the country’s name in the international dragon boat racing circuit.

A VARSITARIAN sportswriter placed second in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) Libre Sportswriting competition last July 1.

Sportswriter Dino Paolo Maragay’s article was chosen out of 30 pieces by campus paper writers from De La Salle University, University of the East, Adamson University, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, Systems Technology Institute and San Sebastian. The competition’s first placer was a writer from the UP Collegian.

THE TIGER Shuttlecockers ended up short again.

With a depleted lineup, the España-based female shuttlecockers bowed out of the JVC Open Badminton Championships last July 25. The Female Shuttlecockers lost to the Far Eastern University Lady shuttlecockers in the finals, while the Tiger shuttlecockers bowed to the Morayta-based shuttlecockers in the semis.

The Tigers did not only fall short of won matches, but also fell short of players.

Female shuttlecockers

A minute left in the game, two points behind, and our favorite Growling Tiger lies injured on the hard court—at the most crucial moment down the stretch. Benchmen rush out to aide him, while a hoarse coach calls for a timeout. The game hangs by a thread.

While all eyes are on the game, the Varsitarian takes the spotlight away from the jersey-clad players to the people in the mainstay.

Fellow Thomasians, meet the people behind the making of a Tiger.

Inside the den

ORPHANED by their chief playmaker for health reasons, the UST Tigresses bowed before a rampaging Far Eastern University (FEU) Lady Tamaraws, 47-80, to absorb their second defeat in five games, last July 27 at the Ateneo Blue Eagle gym.

The Tigresses sorely missed the backcourt presence of Season 70 Mythical Team member Marichu Bacaro, who underwent a tooth extraction a day before the game.

“The rest of the team was shocked when they knew Bacaro could not play,” coach Peque Tan told the Varsitarian. “They were not moving in their usual element.”

WITH THE groundwork already in place, it’s now just a matter of time before the new home of the perennial UAAP general champions rises at the heart of the UST campus.

The four-story UST Sports Complex, whose groundbreaking was held last July 29, is set to be finished by 2011 in time for the University’s quadricentennial anniversary, said Fr. Roberto Pinto O. P., director of the Facilities Management Office.

THE UNIVERSITY has transferred UST athletes to the GMG Active Dormitory Inc. from the Isabel Building last June 18 to prepare the erstwhile Thomasian players’ residence for renovations.

“We still do not know whether this will be permanent. All we know is that the University has plans for Isabel Building,” said Assistant to the Rector for Student Affairs Cristina Castro-Cabral.

HE WAS the Olympic “cop” who used to police the backcourt as a “cool, calculated, and heady” guard for the UST Glowing Goldies of the late 1940s. But more than leading a fearsome crew of hardcourt deadshots that has defined UST’s post-World War II onslaughts in the UAAP, Gabriel “Gabby” Fajardo lent his playmaking brilliance for a greater cause: to serve flag and country in the world’s biggest sporting arena — the Olympics.