THE seventh Shakey’s V-League women’s volleyball tournament opens on April 11 at the Arena in San Juan City with a 10-team cast including three provincial schools from the Visayan region. Moying Martelino, Chairman of the organizing committee of Sports Vision Management Group Inc., said it will not only be a clash of the finest and brightest teams from the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) but also from best teams in Visayas.

“What makes this conference exciting is that the Visayan teams will see action from the start unlike the previous years when they are seeded into the quarters, thus giving all the teams the chance to test their mettle. This is going to be fun, exciting as we envisioned it to be,” said Martelino.

University of San Jose-Recoletos and Southwestern University from Cebu and University of Saint La Salle-Bacolod are the teams from the Visayas while University of the Philippines has decided to take a leave of absence to improve its roster for the next conference in July.

SWU, winner of last year’s CESAFI women’s volleyball event, will replace University of the Philippines.
University of Santo Tomas, which swept last year’s twin titles for a league-best five championships, will still be the team to beat in the upcoming conference.

Ateneo is itching to get going after an impressive third place finish in the recent UAAP tilt along with Adamson, Far Eastern University, perennial NCAA champion San Sebastian and Lyceum and St. Benilde, two teams which retained the core of their last year’s squad.

Under the format, the 10 teams will be divided into two groups and play a one-round robin elims with the top four squads from each group advancing to the quarterfinals.