Premier Volleyball League’s first professional season will not have an import-laden conference.
According to league president Ricky Palou, it is not feasible for the league to hold the Reinforced Conference this year for two reasons.
First of course is the travel restrictions the country has. More importantly though is that the league is aligning its schedule with the Philippine National Volleyball Federation and its preparations for both the 31st Southeast Asian Games and, hopefully, the 2021 Asian Senior Women’s Championship.
“We feel that there will be one tournament this year basically because of the Southeast Asian Games being in November. We won’t have time for a second conference,” he told Radyo5’s Power & Play.
“Our Reinforced Conference will probably be moved to sometime next year.“
Petro Gazz is the reigning Reinforced Conference champion of the league.
Currently, the league is planning to hold its Open Conference either on the last week of June or the early part of July.
Inspire Sports Academy though is no longer a lock to host the tournament as Subic is also being looked at by the PVL so that the national team players are just in one province.
“We are still figuring out the cost since we are now looking at either Inspire Sports Academy, Subic, or other areas. We are still comparing the cost of the venues,” bared Palou.
“All the teams have been supportive, everyone wants to start the games.”
The tournament format has already been decided by the league and its member clubs.
For the Open Conference, each of the 12 teams will get to face each other as the tournament will follow a single round-robin format with three games being played in a day.
The top four teams will advance to the semifinals.
“This conference, we are looking at seven to eight weeks. With 12 teams, a single round-robin will take about five weeks,” explained Palou.
“We are having three games a day just to cut the tournament a little bit shorter.”
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