FORMER “King Tiger” and league MVP Dylan Ababou and three Thomasians will be part of the broadcast team for UAAP Season 84, which will kick off tomorrow, March 26.
Ababou, a member of the UST champion team in Season 69, will be joined by students Kobe Dayao, Denisse Valdesancho, and Andrea Endicio in the list of 18 correspondents, 14 analysts and 10 anchors for the new UAAP season.
Dayao was tapped as an anchor, while Ababou will be an analyst. Valdesancho and Endicio will be UST’s correspondents for basketball and volleyball, respectively.
“I owe a lot to UST Tiger TV and the experience I was able to absorb from that team,” Dayao, a journalism student, told the Varsitarian. “It’s an incomparable experience that I don’t think you get elsewhere.”
“Doing play-by-play and practicing journalism, I believe, are two completely different disciplines,” he added, “but if I had to point out one similarity between the two, I’d say it’s the research aspect of it all.”
Valdesancho, a biochemistry student and also a UST Tiger Radio jock, is a frequent host of University events, including last year’s Paskuhan and the recently concluded UST virtual kickoff rally for Season 84.
“This has been one of the things I really wanted to try out upon entering UST so I immediately grabbed the chance upon hearing the news,” she said. “To be able to represent and report for my own school gives me the advantage to generate authentic stories that highlight our athletes and school spirit as a whole.”
Unlike Dayao and Valdesancho, Endicio is not a part of broadcasting-related organizations in UST but has experience in joining pageants.
“[But] ever since I was young, I’ve been joining public speaking contests and pageant training, which have helped me a lot,” she said.
“I really learned that I should always be confident with what you are saying, and in order to do that, I have to be prepared; you have to know what you are talking about and what you are trying to share,” she added.
There will be no courtside reporters at least at the start of this UAAP season, which will be held in a “bubble” at the Mall of Asia Arena. James Paul R. Gomez with reports from Rommel Bong R. Fuertes Jr.
