PLDT took a rather unorthodox route in signing 33-year-old Russian national team veteran Anastasiia Bavykina as its foreign guest player for the 2025 PVL Reinforced Conference.
Head coach Rald Ricafort described their reinforcement of choice as one who veers away from the conventions of how imports are expected to perform for their teams.
With squads, may it be in pro basketball or pro volleyball, often revolving their offense around their imports, Ricafort made it a point to tap a reinforcement who’d be a fitting support player than one to take the scoring limelight all for herself.
“‘Yun din ‘yung naging basis in choosing Nastiya. Hindi namin hanap ‘yung scoring import. Hanap namin ‘yung support at saka ‘yung veteran presence na matutulungan kami kahit after this conference,” said the champion coach.
“‘Yun talaga ‘yung goal na ituloy namin ‘yung usual productions ng locals plus ‘yung support ni Nastiya.”
For a team like High Speed Hitters, fresh off back-to-back title wins, it isn’t too hard to figure out why they opted to defy the norm and take an unusual gambit with their import.
Firstly, Bavykina has still been quite the steady scorer upon norming 14 points and 7.5 receptions in her first two winning outings against Capital1 and Choco Mucho.
But in a team that has one of the most dominant scorers to ever grace the league in Invitational MVP Savi Davison, who has been with PLDT for just about two years now, the two-time champions are much more in need of a stable support than another main character of sorts.
The Fil-Canadian spiker has been off to a flyer in her first Reinforced Conference, having missed the last one to undergo reparative procedures and cleanups on her once-injured knee.
Davison is averaging 20.5 points built on 15 attacks, five blocks and 0.5 aces along with nine receptions. She is also the league’s third-leading spiker with a 37.5 percent success rate.
PLDT's all in this together
But as captain Kath Arado puts it, the long-term vision for the High Speed Hitters is to build an airtight local core than an overly-import dependent one.
“‘Yung goal talaga namin is hindi masyadong umasa kay Nastiya. Dapat kami talagang mga locals, kasi nga ano ‘to eh, pang-long term. Laging sinasabi ni coach na long-term at dapat may natututunan kami kay Nastiya,” she said.
“‘Yung kumpiyansa, dala-dala namin nu’ng nag-champion kami, pero sine-set aside din namin ‘to kasi bagong conference na siya. Kailangan naming hindi maging stagnant sa nilalaro namin na nag-iimprove dapat at may natututunan.”
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