Her-story: Filipina athletes score breakthrough wins in 2025 SEA Games

MANILA, Philippines – Filipina athletes in various sports made “her-story” in the 2025 Southeast Asian Games in Thailand as they claimed their places as the new queens of the region.

Tennis ace Alex Eala, the Filipinas football team, the Alas Pilipinas beach volleyball squad, the 4x100m freestyle relay swimming quartet, taekwondo jin Tachiana Mangin, and athletics standout Naomi Cesar all scored breakthrough wins for the Philippines in events that had been dominated by rival countries.

For the first time since the SEA Games began staging women’s football in 1985, the Filipinas captured the gold medal as they ended the decades-long duopoly of Thailand and Vietnam, whom they both beat.

Having to go through the eye of the needle in advancing to the knockout round after opening the group stage with 2-1 loss to Myanmar, the Filipinas powered through, hacking out a 1-0 win over Vietnam and coasting to a 6-0 victory over Malaysia to arrange a semifinal clash with Thailand.

The Filipinas were once again on the verge of elimination as they trailed 0-1 against Thailand, but they scored a late goal in regulation courtesy of Jael-Marie Guy, then held their nerve in the penalty shootout, winning 4-2 for their first-ever final appearance.

For a team that failed to make it past the group stage in the 2023 Cambodia edition, a trip to the gold-medal match would have already been a significant achievement, but the Filipinas came for another piece of history.

Dragging a Vietnam side seeking its fifth straight title to a shootout after a scoreless draw, the Filipinas held their composure anew, with Guy, Alexa Pino, Hali Long, Angie Beard, Ariana Isabella Markey, and Jaclyn Sawicki all converting on their penalties and goalkeeper Olivia McDaniel delivering the save that sealed the 6-5 win.

“People are always doubting us and talking about us and saying we don’t belong here. But we belong in this conversation, we belong at the top, and we’re just continuing to prove that again and again, and we want to be regulars at the top,” said McDaniel.

The same happened for the Alas crew of Sisi Rondina, Bernadeth Pons, Dij Rodriguez, and Sunnie Villapando as they clinched a maiden women’s beach volleyball gold for the Philippines by dethroning the country that had held the throne for decades.

Back for redemption after seeing its medal streak end in 2023 following bronze finishes in 2019 and 2021, Alas allowed the Philippines to become the only other nation to win the event after Thailand nailed all of the previous eight titles.

The Rondina-Pons duo and Rodriguez-Villapando tandem won their respective matches in a stunning final sweep of Thailand, which reached the gold-medal match as the heavy favorite after going unbeaten in the round-robin preliminaries.

“We wanted to redeem ourselves because we missed the podium last SEA Games. This is for those who believed in us,” said Rondina.

In tennis, Eala bagged the Philippines’ first women’s singles gold in over two decades when she swept past Thailand’s Mananchaya Sawangkaew, 6-1, 6-2, in the final.

The highest-ranked Southeast Asian WTA player, the world No. 53 Eala won all her matches in straight sets en route to the title that placed her in an exclusive club with Maricris Fernandez (1999) and Pia Tamayo (1981), the only other Filipinas to win the event.

It was another feather in the cap for Eala, who has enjoyed a superb year that saw her reach a career-high world ranking of No. 50 and win a Grand Slam main draw match in the US Open.

“I’d been dreaming for a long time to bring that kind of pride to the Philippines. I’m so thankful and I’m so humbled to be able to represent our country,” Eala said. 

While there have been many Filipino taekwondo champions in the SEA Games, Mangin struck gold in a division that had been a domain of Thailand.

A SEA Games first-timer, Mangin ruled the women’s 49kg class as she beat home bet Kamonchanok Seeken in the final, preventing Thailand from winning gold in the event for the ninth straight edition.

That eight-gold streak included four in a row from two-time Olympic champion Panipak Wongpattanakit, who retired following her triumph in the 2024 Tokyo Games and passed the torch to a worthy successor in Seeken, a silver medalist in the World Taekwondo Championships.

But the 18-year-old Mangin got the better of Seeken and reinforced her status as the future of Philippine taekwondo.

Swimming also saw the end of a long reign by a regional powerhouse as Kayla Sanchez, Xiandi Chua, Chloe Isleta, and Heather White stunned Singapore in winning the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay.

The quartet clocked 3 minutes and 44.26 seconds for the fastest time in the event in six years to beat Singapore, which settled for the silver for the first time since 2013, after ruling in each of the past five SEA Games.

It marked the first time the Philippines topped the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay in SEA Games history and set the tone for a three-gold, nine-silver, and two-bronze haul for the entire swimming team.

Sanchez won three golds and five silvers in total to become the most bemedaled Filipino athlete in this edition, a feat that will net her P1.2 million in cash incentives.

Although just 16 years old, Cesar stamped her class in an event that had witnessed Vietnam dominate for decades as she emerged victorious in the women’s 800m.

Cesar dethroned defending champion Nguyen Thi Thu Ha in a photo finish, denying Vietnam a 14th consecutive gold in the event.

The daughter of former national team trackster Ben, Naomi delivered the first SEA Games gold to the Cesar household before her older sister Malea followed suit by helping the Filipinas go all the way.

“I’m so honored and I’m always so proud to represent the country. To win gold is a dream come true,” said the younger Cesar. – Rappler.com