Sports

FIRING up the season with a smashing headstart, the UST Tiger Spikers walloped a listless University of the Philippines in straight sets, 25-15, 25-14, 25-11, to couch their back-to-back title aspirations on an immaculate 3-0 win-loss record early in the Season 71 volleyball tournament.

The reigning UAAP champions banked on the attacks of Season 71 beach volleyball MVP Hanry Pecaña and Raykarl Dimaculangan to reap a whopping 11-3 first-set advantage for UST in its Dec.14 face-off with the Maroons at the Far Eastern University (FEU) gym.

UST took a ten-point lead at the turn cushioned by a barrage of kills from its frontliners before Pecaña rose to the net to bury the first-set finisher.

The second set left the Diliman-based squad in a daze as UST pulled away from a 5-all deadlock to seize the upperhand, 10-6. With John Torres leading the charge on the offensive end, the Tiger Spikers proved unstoppable, discharging an 11-point surge to reach set point, 24-14, before new recruit Julius Sioson finalized the count with a kill that gave UST a 2-0 set-lead.

IMAGINE Santa personally handing you a big yellow box neatly tied with a white ribbon and with an “Especially for You” card. What would you want to see inside?

The answer, if UST coaches are to be asked, can be summed up in two words: championship titles.

“Next year’s UAAP championship trophy,” Tiger Cubs coach Allan Ascue said in reply to the question. “I also want everybody in the team to excel and raise their caliber,” Ascue added.