Alas Pilipinas — the brand name under which the Philippine National Volleyball Federation (PNVF) fields the country’s national volleyball teams — has spent the better part of a decade collecting bronze medals and near-misses. On Sunday in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the senior women’s team finally broke through. A straight-sets sweep of Indonesia, 25-17, 25-17, 28-26, closed out Leg 2 of the 2026 SEA V Cup and handed the Philippines a silver medal — the best finish the program has ever recorded in the tournament’s seven-year, eleven-leg history. Alas Pilipinas had never finished higher than bronze before.
It capped a three-day turnaround few saw coming. The same team had opened Leg 2 winless against tournament host Thailand on Friday, then needed to end a losing streak against Vietnam that stretched back to 2019 just to keep its medal hopes alive. Both things happened. By Sunday afternoon, a team that had missed the podium entirely just one week earlier was standing on top of a stat sheet it had never topped before.
What Alas Pilipinas Actually Is
For readers meeting the team for the first time: Alas Pilipinas is the national program’s collective banner, covering the men’s, women’s, and youth national volleyball squads that represent the Philippines internationally. The senior women’s team — the one behind Sunday’s silver — draws its roster from the UAAP (the Philippines’ university sports league) and the country’s professional volleyball circuit, assembled and re-assembled for each international window. This particular squad, captained by Jia de Guzman and mentored by newly installed Japanese head coach Taka Minowa, had barely a few weeks of training together before the SEA V Cup began.
The SEA V Cup itself is an annual four-nation tournament — the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia — split into two legs, this year hosted in Hanoi and Chiang Mai. It’s a lower rung than the sport’s continental or world championships, but within Southeast Asia it functions as the region’s most consistent measuring stick, and one the Philippines has historically lost to Thailand and Vietnam more often than not. Standings within each leg run on a round-robin points system, where teams earn match points based on how many sets they win rather than simple win-loss record — which is why Sunday’s match against Indonesia wasn’t just about winning, but about winning cleanly enough to lock the medal in outright rather than leave it to a tiebreaker.
The Losing Streak That Finally Broke
Leg 1 in Hanoi had gone badly. Alas Pilipinas lost all three matches, including a heartbreaking four-set defeat to Indonesia that knocked the team off the podium for the first time since 2023. Arriving in Chiang Mai for Leg 2, the outlook wasn’t much brighter — Thailand swept them in straight sets on Friday to open the second leg 0-1.
Saturday changed everything. Facing Vietnam, a team Alas Pilipinas hadn’t beaten in a single match since October 2019, the Filipinas dropped the first set before clawing back to win the next three, 22-25, 25-23, 25-21, 25-22. Eya Laure, a former University of Santo Tomas standout, led the comeback with 22 points on 19 attacks, two blocks, and an ace, sealing the win with an off-the-block hit at match point. Alyssa Solomon added 17 points and Bella Belen 16, including three blocks. It was Minowa’s first win as head coach, and it put the Philippines back in medal contention with one match left to play.
Sealing the Silver
Sunday’s assignment was simpler on paper, harder in stakes: beat Indonesia and the silver was guaranteed. Anything less risked dropping to third, fourth, or worse, depending on how the day’s other results fell. Alas Pilipinas didn’t leave it to the tiebreakers. The team swept Indonesia in three sets, closing out a tight third frame at 28-26 to finish Leg 2 with a 2-1 record and secure the program’s best-ever SEA V Cup finish outright.
The result also completed a bit of quiet revenge — Indonesia was the same team that had denied Alas Pilipinas the podium in Leg 1 just a week earlier, and the same team that beat the Philippines for bronze at last December’s Southeast Asian Games. Sunday’s sweep flipped that script entirely.
Thailand, playing on home soil with a perfect record through the leg, took gold — extending its own run as the tournament’s most dominant program. But for a Philippine team that had never finished above third, second place behind the host nation isn’t a consolation. It’s the new benchmark.
The Same Weekend, Two Alas Teams Made History
The senior women’s silver wasn’t the only milestone Alas Pilipinas posted this weekend. Roughly 15,000 kilometers away in San Felipe, Chile, the Alas Girls — the Philippines’ U17 national team — beat Tunisia, 27-25, 25-19, 25-16, in the FIVB (International Volleyball Federation) Girls U17 World Championship, their second win of the tournament after upsetting Mexico on Friday for the program’s first-ever victory at that level. It made the U17 squad only the second Philippine national team, across any age group, to win a match at an FIVB World Championship — following the men’s team’s win over Egypt last year.
It was, by any measure, a banner weekend for Philippine volleyball, and it landed the same weekend Alex Eala kept her own run alive at the Canadian Open in Toronto — covered here on ElysPlanet — giving Filipino sports fans more than one reason to stay up late checking scores from three time zones at once.
What’s Next
Alas Pilipinas Women now turns its attention to the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, this September — the next real test of whether Sunday’s breakthrough was a turning point or a one-off. For a program that’s spent years settling for bronze, a silver medal from a squad barely a month into training under a new coach is, at minimum, proof the ceiling is higher than it looked a week ago.
ElysPlanet’s first feature on Alas Pilipinas — expect more as the team heads into Asian Games competition this September.