Cool Smashers find way back to top and what a climb it was
For the Creamline Cool Smashers, the most special championship will always be the most recent one.
Their 11th title was the tallest mountain they had scaled yet, as the full-force Cool Smashers faced do-or-die games—unlike in the first 10 when they were the team to beat. They swept the Cignal Super Spikers all right, but not after being dragged into a nail-biting fifth set on Thursday.
Tots Carlos soared an off-the-block kill to send Creamline at championship point and nailed the game-winning block on MVP Vanie Gandler for a sweet 25-23, 22-25, 25-16, 16-25, 15-11 victory that completed their title redemption tour in the PVL All-Filipino Conference at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Setter Jia De Guzman, who played her first PVL finals in three years after two seasons in Japan with Denso AiryBees and focusing on Alas Pilipinas, marveled at how the league has evolved since she last played in their runner-up finish in the 2023 Invitational Conference.
“Every title has a different story and different sacrifices,” De Guzman said in Filipino. “If you ask the team, we’d all say this journey was unique and even in the past 10 other championships, we went through different journeys to reach that.
“What makes this one special is everything we learned about ourselves and each other throughout this conference,” added De Guzman, who had 31 excellent Game 2 sets.
Finals MVP Bernadeth Pons came back from a historic gold medal run in the Southeast Asian Games beach volleyball after missing three conferences, as Jema Galanza, who sat out in last year’s Reinforced due to a foot injury, also returned, with both do-it-all outside spikers delivering the goods to bring Creamline back to the top.
“This is the happiest and most memorable title we’ve won. The teams that beat us before, we were able to get back at them this conference,” said Galanza in Filipino. “On our way to the finals, we went through all of them. It’s something to be proud of and we proved to ourselves that we can really win a championship as long as we stay together.”
Creamline faced minor injuries, missing Pons and Galanza at the end of the preliminaries with a 6-3 record. In the qualifying round, Cignal took the semis berth with a five-set comeback and made the Cool Smashers catch the last bus ride to the Final Four by overcoming Akari.
