Asian Underwater Hockey Competition Plug from fiona borres on Vimeo.
The guys from the Underwater Hockey club are so talented and so diverse. Jay Abello, who hails from Bacolod, is a film director and got his group to produce this 30-sec. TVC for the 2nd Asian Underwater Hockey Championships. Now everyone wants to see the unedited footage.
The AUHC starts tomorrow and we've all been practicing for over a month now. Results to follow!
In our underwater hockey group, the "vets" are those players who have been playing since the early 90's, when the Philippine Underwater Hockey Confederation or PUHC was formed. There are also those who've been playing since the 80's, of course, during the Jurassic, pre-hockey Period when we were all U.P. Divers.
Marilen Carpio recently sent this blast from the past, a hockey picture from September 1989. From L-R, that's me, Marilen, Gigi Santos, Martin Reyes, Toti Turalba, Freddie Reyes (Martin's brother), Jingjing Llamas and my brother Dave.
How time flies! Gigi looks like Marcie, the friend of Peppermint Patty in Peanuts. Toti looks like a boy and now he and Jing are married with two kids. And we all miss Martin, who passed away a few years ago.
The funny thing is that this is probably the only hockey game I played in 1989. I left Manila in 1988 to take my MBA. In between the two years, I got a summer job working for NutraSweet. What I did that summer was to fax (no e-mails yet) John Concepcion in Manila and talk about launching a diet version of Sarsi.
That project worked out pretty well because at the end of the summer, NutraSweet sent me to Manila with another manager to finalize the launch plans for Diet Sarsi. I was only in town for about five days, but obviously I found time to squeeze in a hockey game one night. I guess that's why Marilen describes me in the photo as "visiting."
I ended up working for NutraSweet until 1996, during which time I didn't get to play any hockey at all because they stationed me in Chicago, then Singapore, then Hong Kong and finally in Manila when T and I got married in 1994. Gosh, indeed how time flies!
The quick news: 3rd place for the Metal Team.
We had one more game left in the round robin; unfortunately we lost a squeaker to the Fire Team 2-1. When the standings were done, Air and Earth played for the Championship, with 3-1 win-loss records. Fire and Metal had 2-2 records and played off for third.
Our medal match turned out to be really exciting. Fire scored in the first half and we were unable to match until the closing seconds of the second half. With 10 seconds left, we managed a goal. On to sudden death OT and in the ensuing play, we stayed down long enough to find Center Forward Cesar free, and he scored the winning goal.
All in all, a good tourney!
I can't believe it. The "old men of hockey" are both on the team that's leading the tournament.
We started our Feng Shui Underwater Hockey Tournament last night at the rejuvenated, crystal-clear Army Pool. I was on the Metal Team, together with Boying Santos-Viola, a fellow diver from the echoes of the U.P. Divers past in the late '70's. I'd known that Boying and I were some of the last remaining dinosaurs still playing but I hadn't been in a pool with him for at least a decade.
We also had stronger and younger players, of course, but when I was looking at the team line ups, I couldn't help smiling that the two of us "olds" had somehow been put on the same team.
The five teams are playing a round-robin over two nights, and we just happened to play 3 games last night. In the first game, we beat Water 5-1. That got the adrenalin flowing and we managed to squeak out a nailbiting 1-0 over the Air team in the second game.
Perhaps age or conditioning was starting to show, as we lost the third 2-3 against a fired up Earth team.
So after the first night of games, Metal leads the tourney with 4 points (2 points per win) and 8 goals, followed closely by Air with 4 points and 7 goals. Earth and Fire have 2 points a piece, although the former has the goal differential lead. Water has a way to go, what with its 0-2 record for no points.
Let's see if we can hang on for victory tomorrow night!
