After the confetti rained down on the National U Pep Squad’s historic ninth crown in the UAAP Season 88 Cheerdance Competition at Mall of Asia Arena on Saturday night, team captains Iris Arendain and Jose Raymund Calapuan briefly shifted their attention to the future.
For Arendain, winning a second straight title felt good, but the chase is also what she looks forward to again-the chase for the Season 89 crown, to be exact.
‘For next year, we still have to improve some things within ourselves. We need this to be a lesson to not be content. We need to be hungrier even in training and in every performance,’ she said.
‘We need to clean everything and trust everyone in this team. We’re grateful to be trusted by our coaches to deliver what we did tonight.’
Despite a couple of mistakes in the execution of its high-difficulty routine, the NU Pep Squad still managed to register 695 points-far higher than those of the teams behind it.
Second-placer Adamson Pep Squad finished with 659 points, while the FEU Cheering Squad had 658.5 points.
Arendain and company also made history on Saturday after moving past UST Salinggawi Dance Troupe and UP Pep Squad in total Cheerdance titles. Both UP and UST have eight.
The journey to get to history wasn’t easy, though. Just ask co-captain Jose Raymund Calapuan.
‘We had doubts yesterday but that’s when we thought that the more we fear, the more it’ll happen,’ he said, still catching his breath. ‘Once we feel fear, we’ll have doubts, so we worked on that.’