With a Day 1 golden sweep already in the bag, Sueko Kinjho took the third and final gold of the day for the reigning champions University of Santo Tomas over teammate Almira Ruiz, Wednesday at the La Salle Greenhills St. Benilde Gym.
Both Kinjho and Ruiz received automatic byes into the Last Eight and took full advantage of them. Ruiz upended Dianne Bargo of University of the Philippines via a waza-ari awesete ippon (two waza-ari) with over a minute left in the match. On the other hand, Kinjho also registered an ippon over Sandra Samson of University of the East.
In the other quarterfinal matches, Karlein Padua booked her place in the semifinal after accumulating two waza-ari over De La Salle University’s Freesia Heradez. The latter’s teammate Charmea Quelino then scored a waza-ari in the 1:09 mark of the contest, which is enough to sneak past Angel Juanillas of UP.
The two Thomasians then booked their Final showdown after dominating their respective opponents. Ruiz made short work of Padua with a victory via osaekomi (pin) with 3:12 left in the match. To make things worse for Padua, she suffered an arm injury in the pinning. Kinjho followed this up with a win over Quelino on a waza-ari after three minutes of battle.
The losing quarterfinalists, Heradez and Samson, made amends for their defeats after taking the bronze medals for their schools. Heradez snuck in a yuko over Quelino to get the sure bronze for La Salle. On the other hand, it was bittersweet for UE’s Samson to snare the medal, as her teammate Padua defaulted the match due to the injury.
