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ABCamp basic volleyball training camp misses 4th year

By Pigeon Lobien

June 9, 2020, 12:49 pm

<p><strong>THE ABCs.</strong> The basics of the sport from serving, dribbling, blocking, receiving, and attacking are learned in the ABCamp, an annual volleyball training camp staged during the second week of June. The camp should be holding its fourth, also its fourth year anniversary, after its founding in 2017 by former varsity players and their coach. <em>(PNA photo by Pigeon Lobien)</em></p>

THE ABCs. The basics of the sport from serving, dribbling, blocking, receiving, and attacking are learned in the ABCamp, an annual volleyball training camp staged during the second week of June. The camp should be holding its fourth, also its fourth year anniversary, after its founding in 2017 by former varsity players and their coach. (PNA photo by Pigeon Lobien)

BAGUIO CITY – A grassroots volleyball training should be staging its fourth clinic this weekend and that will serve as its fourth year anniversary, but then another casualty in the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic that has put a stop on all sporting events worldwide.

The ABCamp should be seeing its fourth group of new players wanting to learn the basics of volleyball this Saturday, the country’s most popular sport after basketball, but had to be canceled because the sport is one of those not yet allowed to be played, according to the Inter-Agency Task Force for emerging ang re-emerging diseases.

Sayang at marami-raming sasali sana ngayon (It’s a waste as we are expecting a big number joining now),” said ABCamp co-founder Sherry Anne Floresca, coach of the University of the Cordilleras high school (UCHS) girls volleyball team, the city’s champion for the past three years.

“But then hindi pa pwede (But then it is not yet allowed),” she added.

Floresca helped found the fast-rising top volleyball clinics here for beginners in 2017 along with former teammates from the UC women’s volleyball team that won the 2004-2009 titles in the Baguio Benguet Educational Athletic League (BBEAL) and their former coach, Yul Benosa, now the Philippine Volleyball Federation (PVF) vice president, who handles training and clinics.

The basics learned by the players, mostly grade seven students, have helped their level of playing, some of them became the nucleus of their respective high school volleyball squads.

In fact, most of UCHS’s starting units learned to serve, dribble, block, defend, and dig from the ABCamp, offered at a minimal registration fee.

Laking pasasalamat namin sa ABCamp, kung wala eto, hindi kami matututo (We owe much to the ABCamp, without it we will not have learn how to play),” said 16-year old Angela Kier Sabas, now co-captain of the UCHS girls team that won the Baguio title anew and was supposed to skipper the Baguio team to the canceled Cordillera Administrative Region Athletic Association (CARAA) meet.

Sabas was hoping to get to the Palarong Pambansa anew in the hope of improving a Cordillera best finish of top eight from last year.

"I do hope that the situation will get better and games to be allowed soon,” said a hopeful Floresca, who played setter while playing for the UC Lady Jaguars in the late 2000s, during the height of the school’s domination of the sport.

Floresca also rues the fact her players cannot even go practice together.

“All is virtual. I just have them train at home and see their improvement through the internet,” she said of her team.

"Anyways, all of them have their own ball, thanks to the ABCamp where we were able to purchase balls and other equipment from the entry fees of the basic volleyball training program,” she added. (PNA)

 

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