Author's Corner: A Championship from a Lasallians Perspective

MUNTINLUPA, Philippines - Here I am sitting quietly in my seat. It's the last period of the day. 45 minutes before we finally get dismissed from classes and go home. Most of the class is walking around talking to their friends or sitting on their seats on their devices. Now the girls around me are asking for someone in the class to live stream the game on the projector screen. One girl said that she wants to see her crush on the team Thomas Torres play his final game before he graduates. The amount of excitement I'm feeling for the game is almost the same feeling I get before I watch a Warriors game. The greatest rivalry in Philippine sports on Finals stage. How much more do people have to ask for it to get any better than this?


During Game 1 of the finals, I was just sitting on my couch watching. The first half was quite slow paced and boring to watch as La Salle was dominating Ateneo by a large margin. It was not until the second half of the game where I started get interested as Ateneo was catching up with La Salle. As what my dad would always say, "A good game is a close game." The final minutes of the game had me on my feet, watching in pure intensity and stress as Ateneo made a bucket for their first lead of the game during the final 30 seconds. People were saying that it is the ultimate battle between the "conyo" nations (Conyo means people who act westernized, mostly rich people.) since people say that conyo people go to DLSU or ADMU, it was a little funny though. Twitter was going crazy over every second of the game as the referees were pretty biased and letting DLSU players get hustled illegally by ADMU players. I was screaming and jumping around when Teng made the game-winning layup to get us Game 1. I was rushing to write my article for the Game 1 Recap since me and my family was getting ready to eat out for dinner and watch a movie. I wanted to finish the article already so badly to the point where I had to bring my iPad to the mall and write it while eating dinner (I hate carrying my iPad around in public, it looks childish.) The mall's internet was bad enough for me so I had to connect to my dad's mobile hotspot. After many delays from WiFi to rushing to finish my meal, I was finally able to post my article after almost 2 hours, which I could've accomplished in less than an hour if I stayed at home and typed using a computer. I could've been at the game itself too but I was too lazy to even buy tickets.

Game 2 was something more, the people in our classroom were watching the game through a live stream on a laptop, cheering and jumping at every play La Salle made, in which our teacher responded by blowing at her dog whistle to tame us. It was an annoying high pitched sound but she mostly did it for fun which was both irritating and hilarious. I couldn't write an article for the game since I couldn't watch most of the first half of the game since I was in school plus it was almost our dismissal time. When our class got dismissed, I was walking to the main gate until I noticed the accounting office was showing a live stream of the game through a projector even if it was past office hours. When I entered, there was many students, mostly varsity players of our school, watching the game. It was pretty crowded outside too as students were curious to see what was going on looking through the window. The varsity students and staff watching the game screamed whenever DLSU scored a basket especially if it was a three pointer. I knew I had to go since I left my phone at home but I knew that my parents always pick me up 20 minutes late. When 20 minutes passed, that's when I went to the gate to get picked up by my parents. We got stuck in traffic since it was raining on the way home so when I was only able to watch the game starting from the last 2 minutes of the first half. We were blowing out ADMU, performing much better than the last game until ADMU caught up during the final minutes of the game. As I mentioned, "A good game is a close game.", and that's what I always look forward to.

"Bite your mouthguard if you just won a championship!"

Photo courtesy of Francis Quinto

And there it was. After three years, we finally won the championship once again. We beat our rivals, the referees, the pressure, and the haters. What a way for Thomas Torres, Jeron Teng, and Jason Perkins to end their college basketball career. I'm not going to say that Ateneo didn't fight hard for it since they kept the game close the entire time, every minute of both games felt like Game 7 of the NBA Finals. I'll have to admit though, I was kind of hoping for a Game 3 between the two so that I can watch the game in person, but I'll take a sweep and the hardware. Oh, and you know that guy from DLSU Ben Mbala? He can ball. The Cameroonian Bullet has a future ahead of him, and I'll be there to watch every game of his. (The Cameroonian Bullet! Get it? Cause he's Cameroonian? And the "Bullet" comes from his last name Mbala and Mbala is Filipino for "Bullet"? Okay I should stop now bye.)