By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña
The De La Salle University (DLSU) Lady Spikers got off to a convincing start in the UAAP Season 84 women’s volleyball tournament after taking down rival squad Ateneo de Manila University in just four sets, 22-25, 25-23, 25-18, 25-20.
It was a momentum-boosting opening campaign for the Lady Spikers after immediately finding their offensive groove against the Ateneo squad.
Baby Soreno put on a masterful performance after leading De La Salle with 17 huge points built from 13 successful attacks.
The superb spiker from De La Salle posed tons of problems for the Ateneo defense and imposed her will offensively backstopped by Alleiah Malaluan who finished the duel with 15 points and 15 excellent digs.
“For us, usually ang hardest game namin is the first one and it’s very important to us. Of course, our team is new so lahat ng adjustments talagang kailangan gawin. And nagkataon lang na Ateneo rin kaagad yung kalaban, kaya yung first set up to the second set actually, adjustment period pa rin e,” said De La Salle’s assistant coach Benson Bocboc.
The women in green and white dug deep after giving up the first set, 22-25, and stormed their way back by sweeping the next three sets.
Lady Spikers’ Fifi Sharma and Jolina Dela Cruz provided the spark during the second set and lifted De La Salle’s salty offense in the first set.
Sharma scored 10 points while the energetic Dela Cruz added nine points to De La Salle’s total points tally.
The Lady Spikers will seek to rack their second-straight win as they face Adamson today at 12:00 PM while Ateneo will look to enter the winning column against National University on the same day.
