The original Askals
ROBERTAwent on to join La Salle’s college team. The Baguio squad went on collecting more championship trophies with unbreakable regularity, mostly seven-aside and beach football titles for lack of regular, 11-a-side tournaments in a country of midgets in love with basketball.
The multi-titled Cinderellas earned the sobriquet for their having to scrounge for funds just to reach playing venues of soccer football tournaments they were a cinch to win in close to two decades of glorious campaign.
After their victory in the 1995 National Ladies Cup in Sta. Cruz Laguna, they never heard again of Roberta Sandejas, the 16-year old from La Salle High School who gave them the golden goal in overtime in that final against Davao. They had recruited her to complete the 11-member line-up for the championship game.
Until one morning, when a front-page feature item appeared in The Philippine Star. The boxed story was headlined “Roberta’s blind courage”. Somebody had thrown acid on Roberta’s face, disfiguring and rendering her blind. She was undergoing a series of skin-graft surgery, even as she expressed optimism about her eyesight being restored – and, perhaps, hope that she would be able to play football again.
After the hand-wringing, nail-biting, eyewelling, the girls knocked on doors, collecting empty bottles and old newspapers they converted to cash at the junkshop. At Christmastime, they came up with a little over P20,000 which they asked Peewee Agustin and me to deliver to the girl’s home in Paranaque. Roberta’s brother and sister told us their mother had brought her to the United States for a series of tests and surgeries. The siblings phoned their father, who dropped his work and rushed home to meet us. Somebody from La Salle told us later that Roberta had married and later passed away. A check on the internet somehow confirmed the transition.
“We are deeply saddened to report the death in the early morning of Sunday, November 7, of Roberta Sandejas Shroyer, who volunteered for many months at the National Center before joining the national staff in May of 2004,” said a news item posted on Braille Monitor. “She was born in Manila, Philippines, where in high school and college she was a talented soccer player.
“After being badly injured and blinded in a tragic incident in her home, she left Manila and moved to Baltimore, where she graduated from the rehabilitation program at Blind Industries and Services of Maryland (BISM). There she met her future husband, Justin Shroyer. Before recently requesting to be assigned the job his wife had done. Mr. Shroyer worked in the Materials Center.
“We enjoyed Mrs. Shroyer’s easy laugh and great sense of humor, her excellent cooking at various chapter functions, her enthusiastic participation in our many activities, and her positive outlook in life.”
With the story is her photo, her eyes covered by dark glasses, her face bearing the scars of her ordeal. Another photo of her in black and white before the tragedy sent memory swirling back to that image in September (her birth month), 16 years ago, of the Cinderellas sweeping the comely 16-year old off her feet, raising her up their shoulders and punching the air in triumph in that Cup in Laguna.