Brooke Van Sickle knew the Nxled Chameleons couldn’t fully stop the Choco Mucho Flying Titans duo of Eya Laure and Sisi Rondina-Rosales. What mattered more was how the Chameleons handled it.
“Yeah, I’d say when versus Choco Mucho, I mean, Eya and Sisi are very good outside hitters, and they’re going to score points. That’s just what they do,” said the former league MVP.
That calm was tested in the third set, when Choco Mucho led 22-14 and was close to taking a 2-1 lead in sets. Nxled then scored eight straight points to tie it and went on to win the set. The Chameleons carried that momentum into the fourth and won, 25-23, 23-25, 25-23, 25-17, at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.
Van Sickle, Chameleons Stay Composed in Face of Adversity
Van Sickle finished with 19 points and 12 excellent digs. She said the key was staying composed whenever Choco Mucho’s stars scored.
“So I think as a team, it’s like, OK, how can we attempt to slow them down as much as possible and just stay calm, right? We can’t be like, ‘oh, shoot,’ and be frowning and stuff when they make an excellent kill. That’s just what they do,” she said.
“I’ll say Choco played really great. Definitely the first set, we definitely were under a lot of pressure, and we felt it, and we had to calm ourselves down, try to stick together as much as possible throughout all the sets,” she added.
‘You Have to Fight’
Van Sickle sees the third-set comeback as a lesson for the rest of the conference, where five-setters and reverse sweeps have been common.
“And yeah, the third set, I mean, it’s not how it begins; it’s how it ends. So I’m really proud of the team for sticking through it. And I think this conference, we’re going to see a lot of that, where it’s like people are already doing reverse sweeps and pushing teams to five. So it’s kind of unpredictable, and it just goes to show that in this conference, you have to fight, and you have to earn every single point, so you can’t let up even if you have a lead,” she said.
“So I think that’s a lesson we’re definitely going to take into our next games. But yeah, I thought everyone did great in this battle.”
Nxled followed up their wild come-from behind win with a commanding sweep of the Capital1 Solar Spikers on Saturday as the Chameleons remained perfect in the 2026–27 PVL All-Filipino Conference Siklab Series. More importantly, the team showed they can carry the lessons of past matches forward.
