It came a little late but it tasted sweet all the same.
DLSU’s first championship in Season 73 was sealed when Lightweight Xavier Stepanek scored a 7-6 squeaker over University of Sto. Tomas’ Dane Pio De Roca, Oct. 2 at The Fil-Oil Arena in San Juan.
The win catapulted the team to a 4-1 standing against their rivals and clinched the Taekwondo crown for the Taft-based Jins.
The Tigers reeled from various injuries suffered during the opening day and were unable to field any players for the first two matches, thus giving the Green Jins an early 2-0 edge.
Bantamweight Wilson Dumo then scored a 1-0 victory against Tiger Paul Romero, which brought the team to the cusp of the championship. UST’s John Paul Garcia, however, scored an 8-2 victory over Featherweight John Amiel Velecina to narrow the gap and breathe some life into the Gold-and-White squad’s bid for a grand slam.
A vicious head kick by Stepanek later and it was over.
The Green Jins finished atop the standings with a 4-1 card, which is identical with that of UST, but had a superiror quotient which gave them the title.
The DLSU-UST face-off ended by the fifth match due to the denial of the Tigers’ outruled protest on the controversial Out-In head kick of Stepanek in his match against De Roca.
As a form of protest, the Tigers did not attend the Senior Men’s awarding ceremonies.
Green Jins Coach Stephen Fernandez, meanwhile, was all praises for his wards.
“We are very proud of what we accomplished. UST is a very strong team, but we trained every day for this,” he answered when asked about the performance of his Green Jins.
Green Jin David Rivera was the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the tournament while Middle-Heavyweight Jaime Pablo was the Rookie of the Year. For individual medals, four gold medals were won courtesy of Finweight R-Jay Del Rosario, Dumo, Rivera and Pablo while Stepanek wound up with a silver medal.
The Lady Jins, on the other hand, managed to maintain their third place spot last season.
The Lady Jins fought diligently to triple tie with UST and Far Eastern University (FEU) also at 4-1.
Lightweight Jyra Lizardo and Flyweight rookie Leigh Ann Nuguid won two gold medals, Featherweight Iyra Tindoc, a silver medal; and Finweight Alyssa Bonifacio, Bantamweight Ynah Bonifacio and Welterweight Mary Ioannina Langit, three bronze medals.
Fernandez said that he was pleased with the performance of his ladies team. “Happy kami. [We’re happy.] We finished third last year considering we only had six players.”
This year, they also played without a seventh player during the second day of the tournament, but they bucked these odds to finish third like last year.
“Next season, we will fill up the seventh slot performance-wise,” assured gold medalist Jyra Lizardo.
