KOBE Shinwa University won a championship in the Philippines eight years ago with a three-game sweep of the 2017 Philippine Superliga (PSL) Invitational Cup.
That team, still led by head coach Kiyokazu Yamamoto nearly a decade later, is on the cusp of winning another Philippine title, this time in the PVL.
After a slim 20-25, 22-25, 23-25 loss to PLDT in the 2025 PVL Invitational preliminary round, team captain Sakura Furuta has kept tabs on what they’ll have to tweak in their playbook to pass PLDT’s stern test in the winner-take-all title game.
“PLDT has strong defense, a fast setter and quick attacks. Our plan is to break their defense with aggressive serving,” said Furuta.
“In our last game, we lost all close sets because of some errors. That’s something we’ll work out but we believe we still have a chance to win," she added.
Can Kobe take down the PLDT wall?
In that match, Kobe Shinwa committed 17 errors against just nine for PLDT. But the most concerning statistic for the Japanese side was how they were out-blocked by PLDT, 11 to one.
As coach Yamamoto puts it, “we saw that PLDT has a really good block so we’re already thinking about how to handle PLDT’s blocking.”
Yamamoto has a golden opportunity to become only the second head coach to win both a PVL and PSL championship after Godfrey Okumu-led University of the Philippines in 2018.
Likewise, Kobe Shinwa can also pull off the same feat and earn the distinction of becoming the lone foreign guest team to be hailed a two-time PVL champion when it takes on unbeaten PLDT on Sunday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
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