BENCHWARMER

Ramon S. Dacawi
Romance with the Cinderellas

So the Baguio Cinderellas went down to a fourth –place finish in the annual Kicksand beach football the three week-ends ago in Subic. Given the credentials of the girls who had topped almost all the previous tournaments they had been into since 1990, even that modest and worst finish would have been news.

But this is not any other country where a team’s victory, even in a local tournament, is reason enough for dancing on the streets and singing on rooftops. Football is hardly an event in this archipelago of midgets hopelessly fallen heads over heels for basketball. Under a fractured sports culture, we have kept our myopic dream of one day waking up to find ourselves the world champion in the basket.

Still, we’re blessed to have the likes of Manny Pacquiao who now and then provide us joyous respite from our belief that height is no might.

I’m not sure if our pound-for-pound best fighter in the world spent childhood dreaming of one day becoming a basketball star. If he did, we won’t have the legend that he is today. What I’m certain is that the Cinderellas –three generations of players – switched from the Euro football channels that Sunday morning to see legend unleash its speed and power on Ricky Hatton, erupting with the rest of the nation over that killer left hook. It was worth the long wait for that swift, arching punch, even with the legion of commercials that further delayed the delayed telecast.

For the Cinderellas, they’re content to have made it to Subic and played in their event that always draws more players than audience. Cinderellas can’t and won’t ask for more. That’s why they earned that sobriquet, for playing within and despite the lack of givens and still, in faded uniforms, emerge champions in their faded uniforms.

Over 18 years of glorious campaign, the girls never gave excuses during those rare times they failed to wrest a crown. No complaints, too, for the numerous times when they had to cook and pack food and travel at night just in time for the first game, thus saving on billeting and meals.

They know they can never parlay four national titles, numerous invitational and seven-a-side trophies and beach football gold medals. The lack of following here for the most popular sports event in the world somehow checked their egos, so unlike some basketball upstarts I’ve seen in my years of sports coverage up to the “Palarong Pambansa”.

My romance with the Cinderellas began in 1991. That was a year after they captured the national YKL-Fuji Cup that served as their first tournament. They took me in for coffee and opened up just when I was swirling the milk in my cup. Their story stunned me, and before it was over, my eyes were instinctively panning the bakeshop’s surroundings for a sign of a typewriter to pound on.

The previous summer, they counted their school stipends which they handed to a jeepney driver. He then drove them to the playing venue in Quezon City for the competition set on week-ends.

Skipper Monique Jacinto recalled they quenched their thirst with tap water while their opponents gulped Lipovitan. Back here, they spent weekdays raising funds for the next week-end match Deep into the night before the end of summer, the girls came home with the cup. Striker Anna Liza Umoc had also set a national record of 13 goals in that tournament.

Football fanatic Manny Javellana had formed the team in the ‘80s, out of high school and college students who couldn’t distinguish an off-side from a penalty kick. When he knew they were ready to compete, he bade them goodbye and went home to Bacolod.

While covering a national sports competition there, I traced Manny, to tell him his girls went on to rule the 1991 Baguio Invitational and the 1992 National Ladies Cup. For lack of fare, they failed to defend the cup in Davao in 1993. Thanks to businessman Dan David, they made it to Sta. Cruz, Laguna where they regained the title in 1995.

By then, eight of them were in the national pool. The rule was a team could field only four national players at a time. So, without a bench, they played nine or 10 and still breezed through the preliminaries. For the final, they needed to muster 11 for the showdown with defending champion Davao.

To complete the team, they yanked Roberta Sandejas, a lanky, comely 16-year from La Salle High who had just started to learn the basics. Regulation game ended in a 0-0 draw. A 10-minute extension still proved scoreless. Another 10-minute extension was called and in the 13th minute of overtime, the ball ricocheted to Roberta in a scramble. She tipped it in for a golden goal. Suddenly, the game was over.

The Cinderellas punched the air in jubilation and the Davao girls fell down to their knees in tears. The girls swept Roberta off her feet, their unlikely heroine in her first tournament. Roberta went on to join La Salle’s varsity squad. One day, the Cinderellas read a front-page feature article entitled “Roberta’s blind courage”. It narrated how her face was disfigured when somebody threw acid on her, rendering her blind.

The Cinderellas went back to knocking on doors, collecting empty bottles and old newspapers. Before Christmas, they raised over P20,000 which they asked me and Peewee Agustin to deliver to Roberta’s home in Paranaque

She was then in the United States with her mother, trying to work out skin-grafting and medical procedures to hopefully save her sight. Her father rushed home from work to meet us.