RP duo trips Sri Lanka in Asian volley

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines’ pair of Johana Carpio and Nerissa Bautista consoled themselves with a victory over Sri Lanka before taking the exit in the 2010 AVC Beach Volleyball Tour Xianning Open the other day in Xianning, China.

Ranked last in the 13-team tournament, Carpio and Bautista hacked out a 21-12, 21-15 upset over eighth seed Gunawardana Geethika and Leena Sandamalee of Sri Lanka to cap their campaign in Pool D with a 1-2 win-loss slate.

The Filipinas earlier yielded an 8-21, 20-22 loss to No. 4 Bakhtygal Samalikova and Marina Pilipenko of Kazakhstan and surrendered a 21-17, 19-21, 9-5 heartbreaker to No. 5 Ng Tin Lai and Wong Chun Wai of Hong Kong to kiss their bid for the Last 8 goodbye.

Still, RP’s American coach Eric LeCain expressed satisfaction with the performance of Carpio and Bautista, who are expected to earn seeding points for the 2011 tour from this rare overseas stint.

“I’m so proud of these two players with their win over Sri Lanka. They have never played together before and had a very short time to prepare for the tournament. In their first match, they had to figure out a lot of things in the middle of the game and still came very close to beating a very tall Kazakhstan team. If this team continues to play like they did today I think they will be winning in the future,” Lecain said in an email to The STAR.

Carpio and Bautista, for their part, said they gained confidence from this Xianning foray as they head off to Haikou, China for the 2010 AVC Asian Beach Volleyball Championship Oct. 20-24.

“The other foreign teams play many tournaments and practice a lot whereas we don’t even have a chance for tune-up games because it’s hard to get opponents in the Philippines. I think we can beat the other teams if we get more opportunities to compete,” Bautista said.

“Having a foreign coach has taught us a lot of new skills that we need to play at the higher level. Hopefully, we can continue with this training to help us in the (coming) Olympic qualifiers. My dream is to play for my country in the Olympics,” Carpio said, for her part.