by Brian Yalung
After a silver medal finish in the recent 2019 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Challenge Cup of Asia, the Philippine hockey team is now focusing on the upcoming SEA Games which the country will be hosting late this year.
Team captain Steven Fuglister disclosed that they will be playing in a couple of tournaments aside from holding their regular team practices.
“We will play in two amateur tournaments as preparation for the 2019 SEA Games. One will be in June here in Manila, the Philippine Ice Hockey Tournament and in October we will go to Bangkok to compete in the Land of Smiles Tournament,” said Fuglister, who won the MVP award in the Kuala Lumput event.
“Those will be our two major preparation events that we have for the SEA Games in November besides our regular team practices,” he added.
Fuglister took the loss in stride, hoping they will earn valuable lessons from their Kuala Lumpur experience.
“After the game, I think everyone was devastated in the locker room. We certainly aspired for more but I told the team that we should write this off as a learning experience, especially that we brought in a lot of players for the first time. I am confident that our players will learn from this game and come out stronger moving forward,” said Fuglister.
