LAST Thursday saw the much-awaited match-up between sister teams Creamline and Choco Mucho in the on-going PVL Reinforced Conference.

Held at The Arena in MOA, it was supposedly a sellout crowd with tickets being bought as soon as available with a lot of complaints too on scalping.

From what I saw, it was indeed a full house at The Arena , and that validated in my mind that indeed, there are two parallel worlds of men’s basketball and women’s volleyball in the local sports scene.

It might even happen that eventually, women’s volleyball overtakes men’s basketball, referring to the PBA, in terms of popularity.
Ironically, in basketball, the men’s side is the popular one while in volleyball, the men’s side lags way behind its women counterparts.

You see what I am seeing now is that the rockstar treatment of PBA players of yesteryears is the reality in women’s volleyball.

That if in the past, there were a lot of individual fans club rooting for certain players or clubs, Crispa and Toyota before, Ginebra currently, it is the same for the likes of the wildly popular Deanna Wong of Choco Mucho and Creamline’s Jema Galanza at present.

Of course before these two were other volleyball superstars like the Phenom Alyssa Valdez who is the single biggest reason for the resurgence of the sport in the recent past, sisters Jaja and Dindin Santiago-Manabat, Aby Marano, Rachel Ann Daquis, Mika Reyes, and Michelle Gumabao who remain popular to the present notwithstanding the emergence of newer superstars.

These two clubs I would say are the Crispa and Toyota of the PVL, never mind that they are sister teams while in the collegiate league, Ateneo vs La Salle games were certified sell-outs.

Actually, women’s volleyball was even ahead of its men’s basketball counterparts for being imported by other Asian countries, Valdez, the Santiago sisters, Jaja in particular who has been playing in Japan, and Mylene Paat, lead the way here.

The fact that there is now the social media, not in existence during the PBA’s early years, has enabled volleyball to surge ahead in popularity with a lot of popular players having their own vlogs or in Tiktok, not to mention the fabs who gave their own vlogs too.

Sure, some basketball stars air their own vlogs but in sheer number, volleyball vloggers outnumber them.

Personal relationships among women’s volleyball players , instead of being an impediment to the sport’s success , has fueled it surge instead.

I cannot imagine it happening though in the PBA, basketball being a macho sport, what was followed by fans then were the PBA players’ relationships with actresses and ither celebrities.

In terms of fans, just watch volleyball games on TV and you will see fans behaving the way basketball fans did way before.

For me, volleyball fans are even more rabid based on on line postings.

Now do you see what I meant about the two parallel worlds of basketball and volleyball?

LOOSE CHANGE: Creamline beat Choco Mucho in ther face off, proving being sister teams had nothing to do with the desire to beat one another…..Chot Reyes can heave a sigh of relief , at least for now , as far as being bashed by fans, this after winning back to back games against Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the FIBA qualfiers… Olympic gold medalist Hidilyn Diaz is repirtedly having problems raising funds to finance her prearation for a possible second gold in the Olympics,too bad. By Lito Cinco

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