It was great to see old friends and meet new ones last Saturday during the general membership meeting of the Cebu Volleyball Association (CEVA) at Casino Español.
Some of the new people who attended the meeting were not exactly people I only met that day, but have been long part of the volleyball community although not yet members of CEVA.
I’d say that I have been part of the Cebu volleyball community for the past 24 years starting back in 1984 when I played for the rag-tag team of the University of the Philippines College Cebu High School.
Why rag-tag? Well, we were not an official team at the start, only a group of students who played regularly after our classes were dismissed at 3 p.m.
Our team captain then was Carl Bugarin, who is now based in California. Carl was not only the math genius of our class, but he was also the best volleyball player having won the MVP award in the annual intramurals from our freshman year to our senior year in high school. I believe his feat has not been duplicated in the history of our school.
There were also Robert Hipolito, Jose Ramon Mercado, Richard Villaceran, Neil Demere from the class after us, and my buddy Dominic Ylaya.
We played from around 3:15 p.m. until it was too dark to see the ball and honed our skills under Carl’s watchful eyes and from time to time under the guidance of Glen Pancho, who was a year ahead of us.
I never thought I would end up playing volleyball having spent most of my time playing football and softball. Since we had a small school, we were all kind of encouraged to learn many sports, which proved useful during our intramural games.
I also managed to play volleyball in college and made the corps squad at the Academy, but was kind of separated from volleyball for several years until the Tri-Medialympics many years ago.
I played my final volleyball game a few years ago when The Freeman bagged the title in the volleyball event of the Tri-Medialympics. I will have to be contented with watching games now and helping the sport in my little way through the CEVA as injuries prevent me from even playing pick-up games.
I probably got lucky that among the many sports, my wife seems most thrilled when watching volleyball.
I learned last Saturday that there were many activities lined up by CEVA for the coming months and I look forward to being busy with volleyball again.
One thing that is most exciting in volleyball games is when there are long rallies and CEVA is now in the middle of one. Let’s keep it going.
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MILESTONE: I’d like to congratulate Jeanette Japzon, who was once a colleague here at The Freeman, for passing the 2007 Bar Examinations.
Belated happy birthday greetings go to my good friend Eileen Rizada, who turned a year older last Monday.
More power!