Bagunas was born on October 10, 1997, in Batangas City. Prior to his college education, he was more into basketball than volleyball. Bagunas started playing volleyball in his second year of high school education and participated in both basketball and volleyball events in his school's intramurals. He also participated in various municipal and national volleyball tournaments prior into being scouted for the National University.[2]
Bagunas also represented NU at the 2018 Premier Volleyball League Collegiate Conference, where he aided the team's title win over the University of Santo Tomas and was also named as the 1st Best Outside Spiker and Finals MVP.[4]
In mid-2019, Bagunas announced that he has signed to play for Japanese club, Oita Miyoshi Weisse Adler of V.League 1.[3] His first match with the club was against the JT Thunders. According to Bagunas, training with the Japanese club leaned towards technique compared to training with Philippine-based teams which he described focus on physicality particularly on managing one's power in executing hits.[2] He left Oita Miyoshi in June 2022.[6]
Win Streak
He would join Taiwanese club Win Streak in August 2022 to play for them at the Datuk Bandar Cup Win+ Streak Invitational Championship in Malaysia [6] and later the Top Volleyball League in Taiwan.[7]
Bagunas's first participation in the Southeast Asian Games was in the 2017 edition where the Philippine national team failed to clinch a podium finish.[2] Likewise in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, there was some issue in the preparations with Bagunas having limited time to train with his national team teammates since he simultaneously had to fulfill his obligations to participate in a training camp with his Japanese club, Oita Miyoshi. Despite this, the national team was able to secure a finals appearance in 42 years and clinch a silver medal finish after losing to Indonesia in the final.[9]
NU represented the Philippines at the 2018 ASEAN University Games in Myanmar. Bagunas was part of that Philippine squad which won the men's volleyball title by beating Thailand's representatives in the gold medal match. This surpassed the Philippines' bronze medal finish in the 2016 edition held in Singapore.[10]
Personal life
Bagunas is engaged with longtime girlfriend Nicole Tracy Tan since April 2022.[11] And they got married on June 6, 2022.[12]
^ ab"アジア枠外国人選手加入のお知らせ" [Notice of Joining of an Asian Foreign Player] (in Japanese). Oita Miyoshi Weisse Adler. June 20, 2019. Retrieved January 19, 2020.