JAKARTA -- The Philippine Blu Girls arrived here very early Friday morning after a midnight flight from Manila and immediately hit the softball diamond as they gear up for their opening match against Hong Kong on Sunday in the 18th Asian Games softball competition.
Fresh off a disappointing performance in the recent Women's Softball World Championship in Japan, the Blu Girls are looking to regain the form that helped them finish second in last year's Asian Championship as they aim for a podium finish in this quadrennial event.
In the WSWC, the team finished just 14th out of 16 teams after winning just two of eight games. Nonetheless, coach Randy Dizer thinks the exposure playing against the world's best softball teams will help them in their quest to win a medal in Jakarta.
"Definitely it was able to help the team prepare for this tournament," he said of the WSWC stint. "The showing was not as we expected, but we decided to just use it as preparation for the Asian Games. Nothing less than a podium finish."
Dizer said that the Blu Girls are now on everyone's radar following their scintillating second place finish in last year's Asian Championship.
"Now they're all looking at us right after that finish," he shared. "We beat China, we beat Chinese Taipei. In all our games in the World Championship, they were all there. It's a whole group scouting, taking videos and everything.
"We are really a marked team. Actually, it started two years ago when we started beating world-rated teams in the US and Canada Cup."
Dizer attributed their below-par results in the WSWC to lack of practice time together as overseas stints in the United States and Canada were cancelled, while training in Manila was disrupted by the continuous rains.
"The biggest thing for me was us not going to the US tournament and Canadian tournament," he shared. That was supposed to be our tune-up before our tournaments. We stayed at Rizal Memorial for two weeks training with the Fil-Ams, but we were only able to practice in the field two times because of the rains. It wasn't enough."
This affected the team's hitting and when that happened, scoring plummeted.
"If you look at the performance at the World Championship, the hitting wasn't there. They did not deliver as expected. In the Canada Cup and the Asian Championship last year, we scored an average of four runs per game. But in the Worlds our scoring was really low."
After opening their WSWC campaign with a rousing 10-0 win over South Africa, the Blu Girls were held scoreless in three of their games in the WSWC and managed just one run in another.
The Asian Games softball competition features seven teams, three of which - Japan, Chinese Taipei, and China - are ranked higher than the Philippines. The other participating teams are Korea and host Indonesia. All seven will play a one-round robin elimination phase, with the top four teams will advance to the step-ladder semifinals.
"Our mindset is to make it to the top four. For us to do that, we have to beat Korea then see what will happen in the game against China."
Dizer says Japan is the heavy favorite to win the gold, with Chinese Taipei second.
"Top seed is Japan, then Chinese Taipei, China, us and Korea. I don't underestimate Indonesia and Hong Kong. They might pull a surprise. But as far as I'm concerned and basing it on the results of all the games and when we saw them play, I feel it's still those five teams."