Last Thursday, while waiting for our flight home to Cebu, my wife Jasmin and I did the best thing you can do at the SM Mall of Asia. No, it wasn’t shopping at Muji. No IMAX. We watched world-class volleyball.
Yes — the FIVB Men’s Volleyball World Championship. The top 32 nations on earth.
Game time: 3:30 p.m. Quarterfinals. Iran versus Czechia.
Iran — young (average age 24), tall (6-foot-5 average height), the same team that beat our Alas Pilipinas squad days earlier. We held six match points against them but lost. (If you haven’t seen the YouTube highlights, watch it!) This could have been us in the quarterfinals, I thought.
The afternoon started with national anthems. “Czechia.” That name surprised me. Wasn’t it the Czech Republic? Before that, Czechoslovakia. On their shirts: “ČESKO.”
How was it, seeing the very best?
First, the serve. They don’t just start the point with the serve — they aim to end it with the serve. Balls rocket like missiles. They dive on the Taraflex, arms extended, saving impossible points. These men could play basketball with their height.
Volleyball is about height and might. But it’s also thunder and touch. One rally ends with a cannon blast; the next, a ball dropped like a whisper over the tape. Fakes. Deceptions. Quick sets are timed to a millisecond. You have to keep the opponent guessing.
They celebrate every point. Win or lose, the six teammates gather, clap and smile. That’s the difference with basketball — you don’t huddle after each shot. In volleyball, you party after each point.
And there’s music. The DJ turns the game into a show.
“MONSTER BLOCK! MONSTER BLOCK!” booms the voice.
“THERE’S A FIREBALLLLL!” — cue Pitbull’s Fireball.
“ACE! ACE!” when a serve is unreturned.
“HERE COMES THE BOOM! HERE COMES THE BOOM!” echoes after a strong hit.
MOA Arena morphs into a dance floor.
Thanks to Dr. Arnel Hajan, VP of the Philippine National Volleyball Federation (PNVF), we sat in the front row. Beside us, Carmela Gamboa of Bacolod, also on the PNVF board.
On court, the Czechs were clinical. They dropped the first set but roared back to win the next three. (They reached the semis but bowed to Bulgaria last Saturday.)
The crowd? It was a Thursday afternoon, so there weren’t too many spectators. My Lower Box ticket — normally P3,000 — cost P1,500. Jasmin sat with our nephew Micco Palmares and they were upgraded because the upper decks were empty. MOA Arena was 40 percent full.
A pity because the spectacle was worth 100 percent.
And then I imagined Cebu.
By this time next year, the SM Seaside Arena will rise. If Manila couldn’t pack the stands, Cebu would. Loud and proud, Cebuanos would fill our brand-new coliseum.
Someday soon, when we host world-class volleyball, we’ll be on our feet — Visayas and Mindanao united — 16,000-strong, chanting in unison:
“HERE COMES CE-BOOM! HERE COMES CE-BOOM!”