Kat Tolentino studying and playing for Ateneo de Manila University was a no-brainer for her.
Back in 2013, a wide-eyed Tolentino was fresh off graduating from McMath Secondary School in Canada. She needed her brother Vince — who had been in Ateneo since 2011 — to guide her around the metro, which led her to Katipunan.
But if by some circumstance the Filipino-Canadian spiker could not make it to Ateneo, she had an easy second school of choice.
“Maybe, I will say UST as a safe answer because that’s where my parents went, so that’s safe. And a lot of like, my relatives went to UST,” she shared to fellow Ateneans Martie Bautista and Trina Guytingco during an episode of So She Did!, presented by SMART Sports.
Yes, the parents of Kat and Vince, Irene and Noli, are Thomasians.
Things would have been very different if the 6-foot-2 spiker went on to become a Golden Tigress.
For example, Tolentino may not have torn her ACL against UST in the V-League back in July of 2015. Then there was the UAAP Season 81 Women’s Volleyball Finals that saw Tolentino and the Lady Eagles defeat the Golden Tigresses to win the tiara.
But then again, it would have been hard to sway Kat from joining any other school than Ateneo.
“I was in university in Canada, but I just decided after I got the second ACL injury in Canada that I needed change, and I wanted to experience something different. And then everything just worked out for me.
“Ateneo contacted me when they heard I got injured again, and they said that they’re still willing to help me and wanted to help me with my rehab and therapy, and they had a very good surgeon [Dr. Raul Canlas]. So yeah, they just called up and I ended up there,” she recalled.
Kat Tolentino also answered other questions like who would she draft between Maddie Madayag and Bea de Leon.
