Former V-League volleybelle Colleen Rossi getting ready for frontline duty
By Rick Olivares
From one frontline to another frontline.
Former Baguio Summer Spiker and St. Louis University Navigator middle blocker and opposite spiker Colleen Rossi is turning in her game spandex for hospital light blue and a white lab coat when she begins her post-graduate internship at the Baguio General Hospital this 1st of August.
After that one-year internship, Rossi will prepare to take the physician licensure exams.
Rossi graduated this past June 2020 from SLU with the degree, Doctor of Medicine, and while waiting for her internship, has been working at her parents’ EET (Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat) clinic.
In the summer of 2016, Rossi and her club, the Baguio Summer Spikers joined the V-League’s Open Conference. While the team did not do well as a whole, they came away with loads of experience and smiles to last a lifetime.
“It was our dream to play in the V-League,” enthused Rossi prior to their maiden game of that tournament. I even joined the Shakey’s summer volleyball camp under Coach Roger Gorayeb and players I looked up to like Sue Roces, Mary Jean Balse, Sasa Devanadera, and Lou Ann Latigay. They even gave us free tickets to the game! And never in my wildest dreams I would play in the V-League. It was a dream come true.”
During that tournament, Colleen had to follow her teammates who arrived the day before in Manila as she had an 8am match in the Inter-Collegiate League representing SLU. Right after the game, she took a bus to Manila and made it on time for the Summer Spikers’ match. “I’d do anything for volleyball,” she fessed up.
“For now, I am allotting my time and effort working as a secretary in my parents’ clinic and doing charity work with my SLU batchmates under the name ‘Emmetropia’s Vision.’ We gather donations and pack them for relief drives to indigent people from Baguio such as jeepney drivers, taho vendors, and the like. Hopefully, we can gather more donations and organize more relief efforts.”
When Rossi begins her internship, she will be doing a combination of hospital duties and online lecture series.
“They want us to have on-hand hospital experiences as doctors-in-training while keeping our safety in mind,” she added.
“If God wills it and I pass the board exams, I plan to take a residency program in orthopedics and hopefully sub-specialize in sports medicine that will cater to athletes. This way, I can combine the fields I am most passionate about which is sports and medicine.”
“At the moment, I cannot deny that I am nervous about the situation as we battling an invisible enemy,” Colleen bared, “but to be honest, the desire to help others prevails in me. It breaks my heart seeing our fellow Filipinos suffer from the effects of this pandemic. I do not want to sound like I want to be a hero or a martyr, but as a future doctor, I want to help my countrymen as long as I am capable.”
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