WAS it a bad case of championship hangover for Petro Gazz?
For first-time PVL champion and two-time MVP Brooke Van Sickle, not really.
“The championship wasn't too long ago. We already celebrated it. It's in the past. I feel like I can say that we moved on,” said Van Sickle.
“We already knew AVC was going to happen, so we flipped the page, that was the last chapter. Now we're all focusing on these games.”
READ: Sluggish Petro Gazz falls to Taipower in rough AVC opener
Van Sickle dished out 13 points, eight digs and three receptions in her international tournament debut that ended in a shock 15-25, 16-25, 25-19, 20-25 defeat to Chinese Taipei’s Taipower.
Just over a week since the Angels’ maiden All-Filipino title win over Creamline, the 27-year-old Fil-American winger acknowledged that it won’t always be sunshine and rainbows for the newly-crowned league champions.
But in the rare moments like today in which they absorbed defeat, BVS carries the fighting mentality that has lifted her through a near two-decade title drought in her volleyball career — ‘losses result to lessons learned.’
“Hey, no one wants to lose, but I feel like, again, you learn your biggest lessons when you're pushed more to the limits because now it's like a fight-or-flight circumstance, so that's all we can do, just hope for the best and that's about it,” said Van Sickle.
Now on the brink of elimination, is the pressure starting to creep in for the Angels?
The answer’s still a no for BVS.
“I wouldn't say it's pressure. It’s a different tournament. Again, we won the championship, but it's time to move on. we're on a different tournament already, so no, I wouldn't say there's pressure,” BVS said.
“We're expected to get pushed. These are all championship teams for a reason so we gotta switch our mental and get after it next game and just try to bounce back and stick together as a team as much as possible and just reflect.”
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