By Jerome Lagunzad
She has been into countless epic battles inside the volleyball court, but Michele Gumabao is in for her most daunting challenge yet in one of the unlikely battlefields she’s determined to conquer.
“Inexperienced” as she may be as one of the 40 lovely candidates vying for this year’s Binibining Pilipinas beauty pageant, the 5-foot-10 hitter from UAAP powerhouse La Salle is ready to put her best foot forward.
“I am new to the pageant world but I consider my inexperience actually as an opportunity for me,” she said in her introduction video posted on Binibining Pilipinas’ official Facebook account recently.
“It’s not a setback because I am more open to people who want to teach me, coach me, and make me better than who I was when I first started training when I first entered Aces & Queens. It was really something totally new for me.”
A two-time UAAP Best Blocker awardee and also the Finals MVP back in the Lady Spikers’ title conquest in 2015, Gumabao decided to put her volleyball uniforms and sneakers back in the closet while replacing those with long gowns and high heels as she tries to fulfill one of her childhood dreams as a future beauty queen.
Her journey for the 55th edition of Binibining Pilipinas, slated on March 18 at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum, isn’t quite smooth as she has anticipated. But she intends to carry on.
“I didn’t know anything,” Gumabao, 25, admitted. “I was clueless how to walk, to stand, to sit and how to answer questions because it’s totally different from how you do in your normal life.
“I’m very thankful they saw me as a hardworking and very determined individual and student and I was very lucky that they (Aces and Queens) took me under their wing.”
However, Gumabao feels a pair of quality traits by a champion athlete – handwork and discipline – could serve her well in good stead against a crack field filled with fine-looking models and veteran counterparts.
“I’m actually looking forward to the work, I’m actually looking forward to the things behind winning the crown; the hardwork, the discipline, the job in itself because that’s what I’m used to,” she said.
The attributes of being a beauty queen may not have come easy and as natural as others have experienced, but I am a hard worker, a fast learner and a dedicated candidate. And just like how I devoted my life to win gold medals and championships, I plan to do the same for a crown.”
