By Waylon Galvez
The first two batches of Rain or Shine players reported for training Monday and Wednesday and all appeared physically fit.
Problem for them, according to coach Caloy Garcia, they struggled finding their shooting strokes. In short, they were rusty.
“Mga hindi daw maka-shoot mga players,” said Garcia in jest in a phone interview.
“Nasa kundisyon naman pero kasi puro pagbubuhat ng weights ang ginawa, conditioning, and mostly walang shooting drills kaya ganun. Kumbaga nanibago din halos lahat.”
Garcia, however, expects his players to regain their shooting form, and eventually their game shape in time for the resumption of the PBA sometime in October.
The season-opening conference opened last March 8 but was called off because of the coronavirus outbreak.
With the exception of two-time Most Valuable Player James Yap and Kris Rosales, the Elasto Painters resumed with 15 players divided into four groups that had one and a half hour practice sessions each.
They will practice again Friday, while the schedule for the third and fourth groups are every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in the next two weeks.
The first group was composed of Jewel Ponferrada, Sidney Onwubere and Norbert Torres while Gabe Norwood, Rey Nambatac, Jayvee Mocon and rookie Adrian Wong comprised the second group.
The third group of Beau Belga, Mark Borboran and rookie Prince Rivero starts at 8 in the morning, followed by the 9:30 a.m. group of rookies Clint Doliguez and Vince Tolentino with Ryan Araña.
Yap is with the first group while Rosales is with the fourth group.
Yap already booked a Sept. 2 flight back to Manila from Italy, while Garcia said Rosales is expected to return the first week of next month as he is still trying to get a flight from the US.
“I hope we’ll be complete by September, with James and Kris joining the team,” Garcia said. “We have two groups with three players each, so dun sila mapapasama para mag-training.”
