The tradition of annual college alumni games started with schools inviting former students back to the campus to attend a football game and parade, mix and mingle with new generation and continue to show support for the athletic program. Missouri likes to claim the first such event, in 1911, but about a dozen others insist they were first.
The tradition of annual college alumni games started with schools inviting former students back to the campus to attend a football game and parade, mix and mingle with new generation and continue to show support for the athletic program. Missouri likes to claim the first such event, in 1911, but about a dozen others insist they were first.
However it started, change came early as schools with football programs began inviting back former players for a Homecoming game, while others, without football, asked alumni to get personally involved, suiting up against and taking on the varsity in a roll out for the new season.
It’s a good way to set the varsity squad in motion, playing for the first time against someone other than their own teammates while getting to meet some of the ones who have come before. The game is competitive, but not blood-and-guts serious, a good way to get things going. It all seemed to work Saturday when the UH Hilo softball team welcomed almost two dozen former players back on campus and then proceeded to trounce them, 12-0 over eight innings.
“We come out here wanting to give them a good game, trying to intimidate them, but it never works out that way,” said Amber Waracka, 25, today, a softball coach at Hilo High School. “After a little bit, you’re just having fun, it’s not all that serious, but you’re still trying to give them a good game.”
Apart from the functionality of easing into the season, the alumni game represents a crossroads where the past meets the present and encourages the future. Sometimes the people who came before can enlighten the current players with a slice or two of wisdom.
“When I started here I had no idea the kind of player I might be,” said Melveena Starkey, a Molokai resident who graduated from UH-Hilo in 1993. “My Dad and my uncles coached me when I was a kid and into high school. I was a bunter, I batted second and it was a matter of ‘do what you can,’ to get on base. I got to be a pretty good bunter, but I was so small, I don’t think I weighed 110.
“But I got in the flow of it, you try new things, you hear different ideas from a different coach, and for me, I got better,” she said. “I absolutely remember my first (college) hit, we were playing Cal-State Stanislaus and I hit as ball to deep left field, got a triple out of it.
“They gave me nothing, I had to earn my way, and I remember on that hit, thinking, ‘Wow, I did that, maybe I can play here.’”
She made a commitment and by the time she was done, Starkey had become a national coaches’ association All-America selection in 1992 and ’93, her career average of .399 is still the best in school history — she batted .430 in ’93 — and, oh by the way, the Vulcans were 125-56 in her time.
There is a sense around the team these days that a return to glory might not be a far-fetched concept. It started last year when Peejay Brun, from Kauai, took a team in her first season that had been 24-20 the year before and improved it to 31-16, good for third place in the Pacific West Conference, one win removed from a playoff spot.
That team had one player Brun was able to recruit in the four months she had before the season started. A coach with extensive recruiting experience and a personal background of high level achievement, this year Brun has 11 new players to make that challenge for the postseason.
“I’m impressed,” said Waracka, who pitched the first six innings. “It’s a smart group and they play together well defensively, they play like a team. I started out pitching them inside and out in a kind of sequence and they figured it out right away and started making contact, they made the adjustment; looks to me like they know what they’re doing.”
Brun seemed to know what to do when she heard UH-Manoa infielder Chenoa Au was looking for new school after not getting on the field much as a freshman. She is playing third base like a vacuum cleaner, counseling pitchers and finding herself on base a lot. With her, some new pitchers and others Brun located, this can be an upwardly mobile team. A playoff team? Why not?
“We have some talent,” Brun said, “but this is really a team sport and the ones that win big are the ones that play together well as a team. We’re getting there.”
With a welcome, opening day boost from the voices and the bats from the past.