As one of the favorites to reach this season’s UAAP women’s football final, the University of the Philippines Lady Maroons have been grinding out results in the early stages of the season. For them, however, doing their best every time they step on the pitch is the main priority.
Poised to make it to the finals again, the girls from Diliman have been getting important results early in the competition. Prior to last Sunday’s loss to the Far Eastern University, UP had won their first two assignments against the University of Santo Tomas and Ateneo de Manila University. While the results have mostly gone their way, the performances haven’t been up to their standards. “The quality hasn’t been our true best to our capabilities,” UP defender/midfielder Marie Navea-Huff admitted. Aware of the concerns surrounding them early in the season, the Lady Maroons have chosen to iron out their game instead of staying content with winning ugly.
After all, getting results with poor performanxes is not what the team is striving for. What means more to them is how they put in the work day in, day out. “The objectives we set as a team and that our coaches make are more important in meeting and with those objectives the results will come. Of course, winning is amazing but that’s not what it’s all about. Winning isn’t everything,” the second year player stated. In that sense, they may be headed in the right direction despite having lost their most recent game. UP Coach Anto Gonzales praised the team in the loss to FEU last Sunday, citing it as a better game performance-wise than the victory over Ateneo.
With no totally convincing displays from the Lady Maroons early in the season, Navea-Huff picked out the UST game to be closest to how they have envisioned themselves playing. It was a 5-3 victory for the Lady Maroons, a game where Navea-Huff thought they played with what she calls a ‘power attack.’ “Not only was there a person crossing but there would be 3-4 other people ready to receive and do something with the ball,” she furthered. After that game, UP has been struggling in the scoring department as they have only found the back of the net twice. It comes as a blow to their consistency after shoring up well on defense. In the same period, they’ve only allowed one goal.
Things have been somewhat shaky for the Lady Maroons, but they are looking forward to addressing the issues soon enough for them to peak at the right time. For them to do just that, Navea-Huff reckons the team has to play more competently on offense, as it has been an area in which they currently struggle. “[We have to] work on offensive creativity and finishing to become more of a threat,” she shared. Poor finishing was evident in their last game against FEU, as they created several chances – particularly in the second half – and may have even won had they made those count.
The road to the finals is still quite long, and the gap between the teams jostling for position is not as wide as last season, when they pulled away early in the season. “Things changed from last year and we have to adjust a lot better,” Navea-Huff observed. After last year’s exploits, expectations have been high and for them to meet those, she thinks they simply have to follow the system and the results will just follow.
Not necessarily gunning for the win, Marie and her teammates are hoping to play with “Perfect Effort” as they go into a first-verus-second battle against league leaders the De La Salle University Lady Archers. The game, which serves as their last game in the first round, will kick off on Saturday, 4pm, at the McKinley Hill Stadium.
