Last June 21, members of media and other guests witnessed not just a sendoff for our 2024 Paris Olympics-bound athletes but also the partnership that was forged by the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) and Allianz PNB Life in support of the Philippine team that will compete in the City of Light from July 26 to Aug. 11.

“We are trying to help our athletes who qualified [for the Olympics and Paralympics] and it’s good to see that even the private sector and the government with Allianz are supporting our athletes,” PSC Chairman Richard Bachmann told Coverstory.ph. 

The PSC, he said, wanted the athletes to focus on their training. Funding for the Olympics and the Paralympics comes 100% from the PSC, he pointed out.

All requests of national sports associations that are qualified for the Olympics and Paralympics, including equipment and training abroad, are being funded by the commission, Bachmann said. “We are also trying to improve facilities and dormitories for our athletes moving forward, and even after the Olympics.”

Beyond the brand

Joseph Gross, Allianz PNB Life president and CEO, said that when the insurance company works with partners like the PSC and the athletes, it looks at how it can add value to the lives of these partners.

“I don’t believe in just putting on a logo. That’s branding. That’s meaningless. It’s okay but that’s not what we as a company is about,” he said.

Citing Bachmann, Gross said the life of an athlete is end to end. “You start, you train, you build your career and you’re hopefully very successful, but at some point in time all of us know that a career’s over.”

When this comes, he said it should not make the athlete dread about the next chapter of his or her life. “This is just the start of a journey that we are going to do because yes, we support the athletes, yes, we work with foundations, etc., but I’d like to go much more with the direction that Chairman Bachmann said on how we can work with athletes.” 

That could start by employing the athletes early, training them, and helping them succeed—a gain for both Allianz and the athletes, he said.

Allianz also works with Henry V. Moran Foundation, a nonprofit established in 2009 to help the poor through community development, education, and livelihood, as part of the foundation’s futsal for development program for young children. 

“This has helped get them off the streets and do something reasonable like financial literacy and life values,” Gross said.

Among other projects, Allianz is opening up a partnership with volleyball star Alyssa Valdez, who is planning to put up a volleyball foundation aimed at bringing the sport to young Filipino women and helping them get off the streets, develop a strong personality and build a career of their own. 

Send-off

The athletes who came for the send-off event were boxers Hergie Bacyadan, and Olympic silver medalists Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam who will both be the Philippine flag-bearers in the Paris Olympics; and weightlifters John Ceniza, Elreen Ando, and Vanessa Sarno.

The country’s para-athletes led by swimmers Angel Otum and Ernie Gawilan, thrower Cendy Asusano, wheelchair racer Jerrold Mangliwan, and archer Agustina Bantiloc, were loudly cheered when they were introduced and asked to share their experiences. The 2024 Paris Paralympics will be held from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8.

When asked about the chances of our athletes to win a medal, Bachmann said: “Right now, for all the athletes who qualified, I will support them and expect [them] to win … all sports. I don’t want to pick what sport, but again we will back them up 100 percent. Just the athlete qualifying already for the Olympics is huge. And it’s a blessing, an icing on the cake, if they bring home a medal.” 

Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz gave the Philippines its first Olympic gold medal in 2020 in Tokyo, showing Filipinos that this was doable.

Read more: After KO win, Marcial sees action in Paris Olympics

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It’s the kind of adulation normally seen for hoopsters in this basketball-crazy country, except that this time, the frenzy was caused by women players of volleyball, a sport that has lately been giving local basketball a run for its money. 

Volleyball has been stealing hearts and attention all over the world. In fact, the website volleyballacademy.ae reported that during the 2016 Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro, volleyball tickets were the first to be sold out among the sporting events. And according to the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB), “it is also now one of the big five international sports, and the FIVB, with its 220 affiliated national federations, is the largest international sporting federation in the world.” 

Not overnight

In the Philippines, the interest in volleyball “wasn’t an overnight thing,” said Sherwin Malonzo, commissioner of the Premier Volleyball League (PVL), the first professional volleyball league in the country. 

Malonzo recalled the 2000 FIVB Grand Prix held in Manila, in which Leila Barros, a skillful volleyball player with the looks of a telenovela star, was part of the Brazilian volleyball team. “She was so popular, and many people flocked to see her play,” he told CoverStory.ph. 

But the interest raised by the 2000 FIVB Grand Prix was not sustained. Hard to believe, but even the volleyball games of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) that now play at jampacked venues were once largely ignored. “Back then, no one watched the UAAP (or University Athletic Association of the Philippines) games,” Malonzo said.

Not anymore. Now PVL president Ricky Palou, together with a group of basketball enthusiasts and players, formed the Sports Vision Management Group Inc. in 2004, and in the same year invested in the Shakey’s V-League, a mix of players from the UAAP and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

“I was already part of the very first Shakey’s V-League held in Lyceum in 2004. That was the start,” Malonzo said. And it marked the beginning of something special because the following year, the Rizal Memorial Coliseum where the championship game between De La Salle University (DLSU) and the University of Santo Tomas (UST) was held, was packed with spectators.

The potential to make people permanently embrace volleyball was there, and full TV coverage of the UAAP games in 2008 boosted the interest of casual viewers and the enthusiasm of avid fans, especially in 2014, when DLSU lost to a gritty Ateneo de Manila University team headed by its captain, Alyssa Valdez. 

Valdez was awarded most valuable player both for the UAAP Season 76 women’s volleyball and finals’ match.

Bigger venues

Malonzo said Ateneo’s Cinderella run in 2014 was a big factor in making women’s volleyball a popular sport. “[We suddenly found] that we needed to shift to bigger venues,” he said. “Before, we were happy holding games at the Filoil EcoOil Centre in San Juan City, but people started to complain that they wanted to watch the volleyball games but could no longer be accommodated.”

Eventually the UAAP games were held at venues that could seat more spectators, like Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City and the Mall of Asia (MOA) Arena in Pasay City.

Malonzo likened Valdez to the actress Nora Aunor, who has a rare charisma. He said Valdez was “a big help in boosting the popularity of the sport.” (I completely agree, and would dare say that Valdez’s playing years in the UAAP paved the way for other UAAP and NCAA players to be noticed and eventually bring their volleyball brilliance to the professional league.)

The Covid-19 pandemic affected everyone and everything, especially sporting events around the world that thrive on fans watching live games. But as the saying goes, there’s always a rainbow after the rain. The PVL (formerly called the V-League, with the latter name brought back in 2022 as a separate league exclusively for collegiate teams) apparently also found a pot of gold when it decided to turn professional in 2021, and resumed volleyball games via a bubble tournament in Bacarra, Ilocos Norte. The games were televised and streamed, to the delight of fans nationwide. 

Fast forward to 2024. Women’s volleyball has hit a high in terms of popularity. Rivalries among schools and professional clubs have made the games more exciting to the point that venues would be filled to the rafters when popular teams faced each other.

Who’d forget the record-setting crowd of 24,459 that watched the December 2023 PVL game between the Choco Mucho Flying Titans and the Creamline Cool Smashers at Smart Araneta Coliseum? Or the March 16, 2024, game that pitted the Chery Tiggo Crossovers against Creamline at the Santa Rosa Sports Complex in Laguna, where the venue held around 6,000 people, or 300 more than its actual seating capacity of 5,700?

Not to be outdone, the UAAP women’s volleyball is also set to break records with the much-anticipated game between DLSU and UST on April 27 at Smart Araneta Coliseum. (Their prior meeting last Feb. 25, in which the DLSU Lady Spikers lost to the UST Golden Tigresses had a sellout crowd at the MOA Arena.)

‘Family sport’

Women’s volleyball in the Philippines has come a long way, and Malonzo cited an important factor in its success: “Volleyball caters to all ages and not just to women. It is more of a family sport.” He fondly remembered that during the Shakey’s V-League there were games during weekdays and the crowd was mostly composed of senior citizens. “They probably watched because they were allowed inside for free, or they just wanted to relax and escape an extremely hot day,” he said. “But they enjoyed the games and kept coming back.”  

Malonzo further said that because volleyball is not a contact sport, unlike, say, basketball or football, it emits a family-entertainment vibe.

It surely does. I witnessed a father-and-daughter discussion while watching a volleyball game live, with him explaining to her possible scenarios that could have happened had the coach not replaced a certain player, or had the player adjusted her serve. 

It’s also fun to watch when a player jokingly swags at an opponent when she gets a point (former DLSU star and now Chery Tiggo captain Aby Maraño comes to mind); or when Adamson University’s Jema Galanza or University of the Philippines’ Tots Carlos (now Creamline teammates in the PVL) or UST’s Sisi Rondina (heading to her second year as a Choco Mucho Flying Titan) fire strong attacks, only to be foiled by a dig by DLSU’s superb libero Dawn Macandili-Catindig, who now wears the Cignal HD Spikers’ uniform.

I can go on and on mentioning players like a volleyball rally that always elicits oohs and aahs from the crowd, and I will not run out of the game’s plus factors. 

This unpredictable game has probably reached its peak, but there’s definitely no looking back for women’s volleyball in the Philippines.

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