Sports Fest News and Updates - 2011-07-09

July 9, 2011

First Game

Romago Thunders flashes pass V. Consunji Beeradors and won by 2 points: 54 – 52

True to its name, Romago Thunders executed lightning fast-break play and sneaked past hot shooting V. Consunji Beeradors. Beeradors maintained the lead for most of the regulation period through prolific shooting from beyond the arc by their designated sniper, De Leon (12), who drilled-in seven treys. However, the persistent Thunders kept coming back and capitalizing through their balanced offense. At the dying seconds of the final canto, Allapa (10) of Thunders caught Beeradors' defense by surprise and sprinted past for the winning basket. Thunders likewise out-rebounded the Beeradors 16 to 10.

Box score:

Romago Thunders: 54 Sazon(32) – 18, Gonzales(14) – 12, Tabios(41) – 10, Lambinicio(16) – 8, Allapa(10) – 5, Vargas(9) – 1.

V. Consunji Beeradors: 52 De Leon(12) – 26, De Leaon(41) – 10, Macabinquil(7) – 6, Hidalgo(10) – 2, Romero(11) – 2, Jalves(3) – 2, Asne(6) – 2, Baria(21) - 2

Second Game

Meinhardt Knight Crawlers out-shined LRPA Masters: 42 - 37 

 

Last Saturday's second game was indeed reminiscent of the Ateneo vs La Salle rivalry, thrilling fans and supporters of both teams. Despite the Masters' concerted effort and blistering offense, they failed to lord it over the Knight Crawlers and lost by 5 points.  Masters staged a fiery rally in the closing seconds of the fourth quarter, but it was immediately extinguished cold by a 3-point shot courtesy of Rocha(12) of the Knight Crawlers. Although both Crawlers and Masters tied at the rebound department with 12 boards apiece, Meinhardt Knight Crawlers distributed the ball better and topped the LRPA Masters in assists, 6 to 2.  Rocha(12) of Meinhardt led all scorers with 18 points, highlighted by two treys.

Box score:

Meinhardt Knight Crawlers: 42 Rocha(12) – 18, Clemente(3) – 9, Aragoncillo(19) – 8, Escoro(23) – 3, Zarzuela (20) – 2, Ramirez(9) – 2.

LRPA Master: 37 Manlapaz(9) – 11, Agno(47) – 9, Ramilo(15) – 6, Rebito(17) – 5, Nañasca(1) – 4, Mauhay(13) – 2

Sportsfest Opened Early

Our 2011 sportsfest officially opened last March 25 at the Amoranto Sports Center in A. Roces Ave., Quezon City.  The schedule was somewhat unexpected to mainly due to three things.  First, it was held together with our quarterly General Assembly.  Second, that it was held before April.  And lastly, it was a whole day Friday event.

The event started with our 2nd GA of the year.  Unlike our previous one held last January, this one was less workshop and more about recognizing our people and their distinctive achievements during the first quarter.  These include major sales of A.O. Smith's residential and commercial heat pumps, a mall-sized chilled water air conditioning system, wave ball wave generator, swimming pool water treadmill, and diesel-run Aurora fire pump.  The GA was short and, true to management's fears, a little overshadowed by the subsequent sports fest.

The festivities started ala-Olympics with Mr. Gogo Espinosa running around the gym and lighting the torch.  After a brief confusion on what to do with the torch, Gogo lead the oath of sportsmanship.  Then, it was the team and muse parades.  Kelly represented Admin/Sales, and Glodys stood for Thermovar.  Service 1 Team stole Len from the Admin group, while Service 2 had Otep's daughter.


The Thermovar group's fiercely competitive spirit was visible early on, with their classy Adidas yellow and black uniforms.  Admin/Sales displayed a more fun-fun spirit, with their Amici Blue uniforms, along with dorky blue balloon hats and accessories made the previous day.  They even got to share more balloon hats of different colors to the Service teams.

The sports fest games started with two fun games, courtesy of Jheng and Gay.  The first game was a crazily tiring for a fun game.  Five randomly selected players on each team played a sack relay race.  The twist is that instead of switching players on each loop, the players already jumping had to fetch team members one by one.  In effect, the first player had to go round 5 times, and the second player 4 times.

The second game was a best-of-3 eggplant and matchbox game.  An eggplant was tied with a rope on the player's waist to hang so that it didn't touch the floor.  The player's goal was to get the matchbox on the floor to reach a finish line by swinging the eggplant.  Ryan handily won the first round, but Pando squeaked past Ryan the second round.  On the last round, it looked like a close game, until Pando managed to move his matchbox in the opposite direction.

After the fun games, we had women's and men's volleyball game.  The service groups refrained from joining the women's game.  For the women's volleyball, Thermovar handily won the game.  For the men's volleyball, Thermovar won 2 to 1 against the Admin/Sales team.  Between the Service groups, Team 1 got the best of Team 2.

After the volleyball came the much anticipated opening basketball games.  Game 1 was between Service Team 1 and Admin/Sales.  During the first half, it was a close game despite Service Team 1 leading pretty much.  However, the second half became a rally point for the Admin/Sales from which Service Team 1 just never recovered.  Admin/Sales concentrated on tighter defense in the paint and on the point guard, which lead to steals, turnovers, better defensive rebounds, lots of fast breaks, and ultimately a blow out.

Game 2 was a fierce battle between Thermovar and Service Team 2.  While Service Team 2 had the tallest players around, Thermovar had avid fans of NBA, which translated to high basketball IQ.  The highly competitive Thermovar also had the loudest cheerers.  (That had its own disadvantage: it made third parties cheer for the unsupported underdogs.)  For most of the game, Service Team 2 struggled without a point guard.  Thermovar, on the other hand, played consistently throughout the game. 

The fourth quarter proved a different story.  Service Team 2 gained momentum early fourth quarter to close in on the game and made for a tense last-2-minute seesaw game, and overtime.  During overtime, Service Team 2 gained fresh legs when a personnel returned just in time from a service job.  They went on to finally notch the back-from-behind win.

Admin/Sales: 1 - 0
Thermovar: 0 - 1
Service 1: 0 - 1
Service 2: 1 - 0

After basketball, Ms. Celna from HR announced the winners for best muse and costume.  Glodys of Thermovar was the best muse, while the Admin/Sales team won best costume.

It was a whole day event.  The first shots have been fired.  We got back to our office at 5:30pm.  But people are already looking forward to the succeeding games.

April Sports Fest

April Summer is next month, and sports fest fever is catching on.  At least for the boys.  With this year's basketball league coming in a few weeks, the guys have been busy with building teams, practicing, and making uniforms.  Meanwhile some of the women have started plotting some crazy parlor games to add some spice to the games.

Games expected to be held include badminton, basketball, billiards, bowling, chess, darts, table tennis, and volleyball.

Congratulations Admin Team!

It was the obviously inevitable match up, between Admin and Service whose games between were consistently close over the regular season.  Both teams got 5-1 cards at the end of the tournament, and both played their strengths throughout.

Just an hour ago, however, ended Game 2 and the championship tournament.  It was a best of three tournament, but Admin managed to eke out wins against the Service team in both closely contested games 1 and 2.  Both games ended with too close scores near the dying seconds to give spectators bits of excitement and uncertainty. 

In Game 1's final possession of the Service team, they could have overcome an arguably easy two-point lead of the Admin team, but alas, an inbound interception sealed the victory to the champion. 

In Game 2, Service could have tied the game with two free throws with 3 seconds left.   The first free throw miss lead to the difficult scenario of requiring an offensive rebound that did not materialize.  Service was given an accidental final chance when they intercepted the last inbound pass.  Nevertheless, time and distance proved insurmountable.

In the end, both teams gave their all, but only one can win in this competitive game of skills, luck, effort and most of all, teamwork.  Congratulations to the Admin Team for winning 2010's Amici Basketball Tournament!

Basketball Round 5

Last Friday was round 5 of Amici's basketball tournament for 2010.  I don't actually know how many rounds this goes, though with only four teams, there shouldn't be any kind of playoff.  Nevertheless, the standings are definitely showing some obvious match-ups:

Admin 4-1
Sales 1-4
Service 4-1
Thermovar 1-4






Last Friday's Game 1 between Service and Sales was not an obvious runaway win for the Service team.  For most of the game, Service was able to hang to a lead against Sales.  Sales however was able to lead the game a number of times or at least stay close for the rest of the game.  Sales put a lot of effort in defense, regrouping every time a breakdown occurred, at the expense of their timeouts.  The last few minutes of the game gave Sales a 3-point lead that, combined with the seeming consistent game play Sales was showing the last quarter, seemed to guarantee an upset victory for the Sales.  Celebration however was too early then, as Service was able to capitalize on offensive lapses that broke the tempo, and gave the Service the comeback win.

Game 2 however was a rout for the Admin team.  Despite a first half double digit lead by the Thermovar team, the Admin team regrouped with consistent and effective defense to gain the lead and the momentum for the rest of the game.

2010 Basketball Round 4

2010 Basketball Standing

Admin 3-1
Sales 1-3
Service 3-1
Thermovar 1-3

I heard last night's games were particularly exciting.  Game 1 between Sales and Thermovar finally gave the Sales team a win.  Game 2 on the other hand gave the Admin team their first loss in the series.  That loss though gave some sense of pride to the 5 admin players who played last night.  Admin with no bench at all to field against Service's bottomless bench lost by only 2 points.  That's not an easy feat, if I say so myself.

2010 Basketball Standing

Round 2 and 3 came and went and here are the standings:


Admin: 3-0
Sales: 0-3
Service: 2-1
Thermovar: 1-2


Round 4 comes this Friday.  Good luck, guys!

2010 Basketball Round 1

Last year, Amici Sportsfest  2009 was abruptly postponed due to the Ondoy flooding.  While there were plans for chess, badminton, bowling, basketball, and mayhaps table tennis, we only managed to play Bowling.  (Ironically, the winner then was the Laguna team, which has since been dissolved and reorganized due to strategic reasons.)  Among many of us however are sports lovers who can't let the big let down hold us back forever.  And so, we're back to our 2nd set of games, basketball.

We had our first round of basketball last Friday.  Game 1 was Thermovar vs Amici Sales, while Game 2 was Service vs Admin.  I arrived late for the event while playing chauffeur  for my sister because our regular driver was on time for basketball and missing from overtime work.  Luckily, I just got there in time for the 2nd game with the Admin team.

There aren't a lot of guys in our Admin department, so the basketball tournament organizer, our service head manager, managed to stack our deck a little.  Service managers belong to the Admin group.  It's arguably fair, what with the Service team packed with big guys and a big bench.  The Sales team, however, have it against them, because a number of their players are really first time players. 

I didn't play a lot of minutes -- I managed to get 2 fouls, 1 assist, 0 out of 1 field goal attempts, and perhaps a rebound or two. There wasn't much seesaw in the scores.  It was an exciting game nonetheless.  For the first quarter, Service team was mostly leading by five points or so.  From the 2nd quarter onwards, our Admin team was leading.  Admin's lead had ballooned to almost 10 during the 3rd quarter.  But late during the 4th quarter, Service has managed to trim their deficit to two points.  The last minute was tense, but a turnover by the Service team that time sealed the win for us.

Tomorrow marks the 2nd round of basketball.  Game 1 will be Admin versus Thermovar, and game 2 will be between Service and Sales.  Stay tuned for more sports update.