By ADRIAN STEWART CO

Negrense Bernadeth Pons and Cherry Rondina, along with other Alas Pilipinas bets, faltered in the quarterfinals round of the Beach Pro Tour Futures Nuvali in Laguna province’s Santa Rosa City over the weekend.

The “SiPons” pair failed to sustain their strong start to suffer an 18-21, 21-19, 15-13 defeat to Beata Vaida and Francesca Alupei of Romania in their quarterfinals encounter.

Prior to the “SiPons,” Alupei and Vaida had also ousted another Alas Pilipinas tandem in Kathrina Epa and Honey Cordero, 19-21, 25-23, 15-5, during their Round-of-12 encounter.

“I’m proud of our performance here. The preparation was really short, but we worked hard for this. Unfortunately, we fell short,” Pons said.

“We have a lot to work on. I was looking to get that one kill block because that would have been huge in a close match like this. But this is still a good start, and we’ll do better in the next events,” she added.

University of Santo Tomas’ Khylem Progella and Sofiah Pagara also failed to progress to the semifinals round following a 21-16, 21-17 loss to New Zealand’s Shauna Poley and Olivia McDonald.

In the men’s division, James Buytrago and Rancel Varga also dropped their quarterfinals match against Eylon Elazar and Kevin Cuzmisiov of Israel in straight sets, 21-17, 21-15./ASC, WDJ