ANTIPOLO — Hours before Petro Gazz dished out a rare win over perennial rival Creamline in the 2024-25 PVL All-Filipino Conference semifinals, there was a rather interesting sight outside the dugouts at the Ynares Center.
READ Palma on rare Petro Gazz win vs Creamline: 'Ibahin natin 'yung storya'
The Angels’ Japanese head coach Koji Tsuzurabara grabbed a monobloc chair and sat alone at a dim corner, some few steps away from the team’s locker room.
There, he sat for about half an hour where he was surrounded with deafening silence. It was him and his headphones against the world at that moment.
But it wasn’t just a one-time, out-of-town pre-game ritual of sorts for Tsuzurabara.
There is actually a cultural reason as to why the 60-year-old Miyazaki native chooses to stay away than with his players for the most part in the final hours before taking the taraflex.
“As a simple answer, I’m a Japanese person. I’m a women’s team coach. Male Japanese (persons) don’t enter women’s locker rooms, so I always wait outside,” Tsuzurabara told SPIN.ph.
“I study, play music to relax, drink coffee, thinking about tactics and make a game (plan).”
Right before thousands of fans trooped the Antipolo venue to witness his Angels side draw first blood in single-round robin play, there’s a reason why listening to music has always been his first choice of pre-game activity.
“I like this (personal) time. I listen (to music) to clear the mind and focus,” Tsuzurabara said.
Finding his Filipino smile
Some might see him as too serious a coach on the sidelines as he navigates lingusitic and cultural barriers in his 15-month tenure to date.
With the help of his Petro Gazz aces, Tsuzurabara has made it a point to smile a bit more often and enjoy his time in the Philippines even more.
“The players said to me, ‘Coach, you have to enjoy more. You need to smile more’ because sometimes, I lose my smile,” he said.
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