It’s the sixth straight Grand Prix finals appearance for 2019 Philippine Superliga (PSL) team F2 Logistics after sweeping the best-of-three semifinals series against PLDT Home Fibr last Thursday, April 25 at the Flying V Filoil Arena in San Juan City.
The three-set game’s scores ended 26-24, 26-24, and 25-17, with both imports Lindsay Stalzer and MJ Perez leading the way once again with 16 points each. Majoy Baron and Ara Galang also contributed eight points each, while setter Alex Cabanos chipped 16 excellent sets and four aces. Dawn Macandili totalled 16 digs and six excellent receptions. For PLDT, Grace Lanzard and Kendra Dahlke both contributed double digits at 16 and 14 points respectively.
Despite the sweep, the Cargo Movers’ head coach Ramil de Jesus shared that it was not easy defeating PLDT, explaining in Filipino, “Their team has already jelled. The connections of the middle, imports, and setter were okay,” adding, “On our side, everybody is still testing the waters. The team is still not confident in what our setter does.” However, he said, “Good thing is that somehow near the end, we were still able to make something out of it and Alex was able to redeem herself with serving and defense.”
Mid-game, PLDT head coach Roger Gorayeb was sent to the penalty box for constant complaining of a non-call, but Coach Ramil said he understands his counterpart’s opinions, saying, “You can’t blame Coach Roger, there were a lot of calls,” yet continued, “However, there’s no bias. It wasn’t biased. There were a lot of ours that weren’t seen during the game, but you can’t always constantly review it on the video challenge.”
F2 Logistics will face last season’s finals’ rivals, the Petron Blaze Spikers, once again on Tuesday, April 30 at the same venue. On the same day, PLDT will be facing Cignal to compete for third place.