Leaving a light on
Akari’s first PVL Finals appearance should have been a memorable night with a team that seemed endlessly stuck in the middle part of the standings inching closer to realizing a dream championship.
As the Chargers took on the stage of their Reinforced Conference title-bout against Creamline, though, they were immediately greeted by loud boos from the crowd late Wednesday night.
The noise was too loud for the young team to ignore.
“It’s also a very bad experience because of the bashers [and] our players got affected. The physical part [of our game] we can recover in one to three days but for the mental health it’s very toxic,” coach Taka Minowa said late Wednesday night.
“[As a result] we need to have a rest and that’s also one of the reasons we have to skip the Invitational,” Minowa added.
The negativity took root five nights ago when Akari booked its ticket to the Finals through a controversial five-set win against PLDT in the semifinals.
With the High Speed Hitters at match point, the PLDT coaching staff called for a net fault video challenge on Akari’s Ezra Madrigal which was deemed unsuccessful after a lengthy discussion. That gave a point to the Chargers, who tied the game at 14 before securing the game.
The league cited an FIVB rule on net touches, saying that Madrigal’s error after attempting a block was no longer a fault since Oly Okaro had already dug the ball in the back row.
Protest
PLDT filed a protest but the league decided to maintain its decision further fueling the outrage of people on social media, some of who crossed the line with death threats.
“I’m the person who always makes tactical [decisions] but this time, I saw all the players are totally different as shown by their faces and not enjoying playing [and the atmosphere],” Minowa said.
“Until the end the fans didn’t stop so this time maybe I feel like it’s not normal because if you ask someone, [others] will say [it’s] normal. But I hope it’s not going to be normal because it’s [terrible],” he added.
The heavy atmosphere in the PhilSports Arena paired with a very experienced opponent opposite the Chargers was too much to handle as Creamline handed Akari a first loss in 11 games this conference, 25-15, 25-23, 25-17.
Still a milestone
“Hopefully, we’re going to [learn] from this experience but how to handle [this situation] I will say I haven’t [experienced] anything like this before in the past games,” Minowa said. “After [a bad] set, we always recover but this time, until the end, we [were not able to] handle the fans. That’s why we learned a lot from this finals.”
Ivy Lacsina, one of the main weapons of Akari, was one of the players that much of the hate inexplicably gravitated to—but she has a different way of seeing things.
“I always say that whether you do something good or not, others will have something to say,” Lacsina said. “I just thought of the team and focused on [my teammates], focused on what was in front of us.”
“I guess since we are a young team, not everyone of us is used to that kind of crowd so we were not able to fully block out the noise and like what coach Taka said, it definitely affected us but it will depend on the player how to handle it,” Lacsina added.
Despite the defeat, the silver finish marked a milestone for the young Akari squad, which has never finished better than seventh in a PVL tournament.
“We’re happy because the target of the team [for this conference] was to finish [top] four, [top] five,” hitter Grethcel Soltones said. “So we didn’t expect to get to the championship. And we’re happy despite what happened. Even if we finished second, it was not an easy [thing to accomplish] because the truth is, there are a lot of good teams.”
“And silver is not something to look down on.”
