The truth behind their record

Farm Fresh’s record doesn’t necessarily reflect the way the Foxies have been playing in the PVL Reinforced Conference.

With a 3-4 (win-loss) card and at No. 8, they are among the teams struggling to advance to the knockout quarterfinals.

But the Foxies believe that having the right mindset will only help them moving forward, especially with unbeaten Akari in their way.

“Like what Louie [Romero] said earlier, if we look at [Akari] as the top … team, we will only feel pressured; so we will only look at them … as an equal,” Trisha Tubu told the Inquirer in Filipino.

“We need to push each other and if we stick to our game plan there will always be an improvement. There isn’t only one of us who scores so we need to trust each other and not only on our import,” she added.

Caitlin Viray and Tubu are the reliable local scorers helping import Yeny Murillo. It has been a focus for Farm Fresh to not put all the scoring duties on their Colombian teammate, a lesson reinforced by the team’s 25-17, 25-23, 25-20 victory over Capital1 on Thursday.

On the way to the win, the Foxies shut down record scorer Marina Tushova, limiting her to 18 points and leaving the Solar Spikers scrambling for an answer that never came.

The Foxies have always brought intensity into every game, not only in their wins against Galeries Tower, Nxled and the Solar Spikers.

But a variety of factors constantly bog down Farm Fresh.

“We are lacking maturity, enjoyment and focus and we are working on it,” Tubu said. “Whenever we are leading, we lose our focus so we really need consistency not only at the start but also toward the finish.”

“Sometimes that’s more painful, when we are winning then suddenly we drop the game. We need to stay focused in the endgame not only at the start,” she added.

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Machine contained

Farm Fresh showed its commitment to be better and stuck to the game plan to stop scoring machine Tushova, whom they knew can be lethal when her team is pushed against a wall. That strategy was crafted by Japanese mentor Shota Sato, who has brought in a new dynamic to the team when he took over at the start of this conference.

“He told us that we slowly progress and that we show grit and quality every game even if we are losing and he hopes that in the remaining games, our focus becomes 80 to 90 percent,” Tubu added.

The former Adamson hitter has described Sato as being like a father to the squad, always trying to keep Farm Fresh’s atmosphere light, encouraging the players to communicate and taking the time to check up on everyone.

And heading into its final preliminary game against the undefeated Akari, probably its heaviest task in the entire conference because of the consequences of the result, they will try to make Sato proud by staying on track to improvement.“He always says that the focus he is saying will start with us, with our own discipline starting in the training. He says that our discipline during training should also be the same during games,” Tubu said. INQ