THE medal drought continues for the Philippine women’s volleyball team in the Asian Games.
Alas Pilipinas bowed to defending champion China and Kazakhstan in the group stage and was relegated to the classification round for 9th to 12th places.
After skipping the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, the Philippines sent a team to Nagoya in Japan, hoping to surpass its eighth place finish in the 2018 Games in Indonesia.
Not gonna happen this time.
Much was expected for Alas Pilipinas in Nagoya.
For one, the team is composed of young players with playmaker Jia De Guzman as the only holdover from the 2018 team.
Leading the squad are Thea Gagate, Bella Belen, Alyssa Solomon, Eya Laure and Angel Canino, all capable of holding their own against top Asian teams.
In its opening game, Alas Pilipinas showed a gallant fight but lost to powerhouse China, 18-25, 22-25, 8-25 on Sept. 16.
The following day, the Philippines played a better all-around game but fell short to Kazakhstan, 29-27, 24-26, 23-25, 19-25.
Alas Pilipinas coach Taka Minowa, a Japanese, bared his emotions and admitted that the loss against Kazakhstan was tough to swallow as the team failed in its mission to make the next round.
“It's really sad. I’m really sorry to everyone for making this happen, but we will change our motivation and also the target — which is also that we're going to finish 9th. We (should) win 3 games in a row. That's what we should do with these Asian Games,” said Minowa, who was tapped as national coach on July 1, 2026.
The 23-year-old Angel Canino, however, served as the team’s spark plug after scoring 24 points against Kazakhstan and 14 points against China.
“The experience that we learned today, and the opponent that we fought today, was really tough. It’s really hard, and they’re really tall, and we hope that we learned a lot from it, and address our lapses. That’s what we want: to learn. Hopefully, we can get the results that we want,” she said.
The Philippine women’s volleyball team has yet to win a medal in the Asian Games but finished at fourth place in 1962 and 1966.
