All-Filipino Conference kicks off Saturday; Nxled among favorites

FROM 12 to 10 teams, a new format and a completely different landscape await the Premier Volleyball League (PVL) when it closes the season with the All-Filipino Conference (AFC) unfurling on Saturday.

With the defending champion Petro Gazz out on an indefinite leave and Chery Tiggo leaving, it will now be up to the remaining clubs to battle it out for the biggest, toughest and most prestigious conference of it all — the AFC.

Nxled, after absorbing the bulk of that Angels franchise that won it all in this same conference a year ago, should be one of the title favorites along with powerhouse teams like 10-time champion Creamline and PLDT, last year’s PVL on Tour and Invitational titlist.

The Chameleons will parade a vastly improved roster of Brooke Van Sickle, MJ Phillips, Myla Pablo, Jonah Sabete, Jules Tolentino and Bang Pineda from Petro Gazz, Aby Maraño from Chery Tiggo and Aduke Ogunsanya from Choco Mucho.

“It will be a good problem,” said Nxled coach Ettore Guidetti of the team lineup logjam.

For the Cool Smashers, they should be strong candidates to reclaim the title they last won two years ago especially now that Jia de Guzman is back after a three-year absence along with another returnee in Bernadeth Pons.

Ms. De Guzman was in Japan and was with Alas Pilipinas during her prolonged absence while Ms. Pons was with the beach volley team that snared the gold in last December’s Thailand SEA Games.

“Very excited with how much the PVL has changed and I would really expect that challenge,” said Ms. De Guzman.

For the High Speed Hitters, they have decided to keep the core that won them two crowns a season back and picked just one in middle blocker Seth Rodriguez, who will momentarily fill the vacuum left by Dell Palomata, who will be out of the country at least for a little over a month.

“We’re relying on our chemistry,” said PLDT Manager Bajjie del Rosario.

Choco Mucho should be another team to watch after acquiring possibly the biggest free agent in the market in Eya Laure and getting back Sisi Rondina, who, like Ms. Pons, was part of that golden squad in Thailand.

Teams like Farm Fresh, ZUS Coffee, Galeries Tower also made a free agent splash and should be contenders too.

Akari and Cignal, like PLDT, have also kept their core and should be somewhere up there in the standings.

The league opens on Saturday at the Filoil Arena with Galeries Tower battling Cignal at 4 p.m. and Akari tackling Choco Mucho at 6:30 p.m.

Under the new system, a team that sweeps the single round-robin eliminations earns an outright berth in the semifinals.

If not, the top four squads will clash in the Qualifying Round knockout matches, with the winners advancing to the next round. The losing teams, meanwhile, are not immediately eliminated.

Instead, they drop into the newly introduced Play-In Stepladder phase — another first for the league — where teams ranked fifth to 10th get a second chance to stay alive.

This Play-In format injects an added layer of drama and unpredictability, ensuring that no game is meaningless and that late surges can still rewrite a team’s destiny. Rankings throughout the eliminations and beyond will be determined using the FIVB Team Classification System, which accounts for wins, set ratio, and points ratio, reinforcing fairness and consistency.

The semis will be contested in a single round-robin format, again using the FIVB system to rank the teams. From there, the top two will battle for the championship in a best-of-three Finals series at the Araneta Coliseum, with the organizing Sports Vision targeting an April 28 conclusion.

PVL Notes: The Philippine National Volleyball Federation, with the help of the Philippine Sports Commission and Philippine Olympic Committee, will host Week 2 of the Women’s Volleyball Nations League from June 17 to 21 that will have Japan, Italy, the United States, Serbia, Dominican Republic and Czechia. — Joey Villar