Last year, the UH-Hilo volleyball team conducted a grand experiment with the addition of assistant coach Carl McGown, who’s been a part of NCAA national championships at BYU and U.S. Olympic gold medal squads.
Could one of the best teachers in the world transform a subpar team (the Vuls were 9-14 in 2014) into a much better version with basically the same players?
In a word: No.
The Vuls went 11-12 in 2015, losing their last four matches, and finished 10th with a 9-11 record in the 14-team PacWest.
The two most critical skills or bread-and-butter basics are serving and passing. That’s something all coaches from national-team level to high school always preach.
It helps teams with even marginal talent remain competitive. Tough serves allow a defense to set up a camped-out block. Accurate passes give an offense, at the very least, a fighting chance.
Last season, the Vuls batted 1 for 2 on those fronts among conference foes. Unlike baseball, that’s not a good thing.
UHH ranked second in aces but next-to-last in assists, a result of wobbly passes to setter Sienna Davis, who was seen scrambling all over the place and was often unable to run a multiple offense.
The Vuls didn’t break into the top 10 for the all-important stats such as hitting percentage, assists, kills, or blocks. They were ninth in digs.
What’s more, no Vul received All-PacWest recognition: first team, second, third team or even honorable mention. It was the same thing in 2014. In 2013, Marley Strand-Nicolaisen was the freshman of the year; she’s now a UHH senior.
When UHH has first-team talent on its roster, even in sparse amounts, coach Tino Reyes has produced a winning record and reached the postseason.
The last time the Vuls advanced to the Division II West Regional was in 2011 when Hillary Hurley made the All-PacWest first team. That was Hurley’s senior year, and the Vuls haven’t had a winning season since.
All of UHH’s sports are not on a level playing field with the rest of the PacWest due to scholarship amounts. On the Division II level, eight volleyball full-rides are the limit; the Vuls offer an amount of 6.1 scholarships.
The Cal Poly Pomona Broncos play in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, self-touted as the nation’s most successful Division II conference.
They finished 17-13 last year and lost to Sonoma State in the CCAA tournament semifinals. The Seawolves eventually reached the NCAA Tournament.
Last season, middle blocker Kristen Hamlin made the all-conference second team, and Cal Poly graduated two seniors who made the first team.
Cal Poly was picked to finish third in the CCAA’s South division behind No. 1 choice Cal State San Bernardino and No. 2 UC San Diego, two annual NCAA Tournament regulars.
There’s a sharp difference between Cal Poly and UHH, and it’s not only in talent and win-loss records.
During the offseason because of limited resources, Reyes wasn’t able to add any significant upgrades to the roster, and McGown didn’t returned to the coaching staff.
Strand-Nicolaisen, Davis, and Kyndra Trevino-Scott entered the program in 2013 as freshmen. They’ve yet to experience a winning season, a reversal of fortune for Strand-Nicolaisen. She was a transformational player at Ka‘u, where she led the Trojans to their first BIIF Division II crown in 2012.
The Vuls next head to the PacWest/GNAC/CCAA Crossover tournament, which starts Thursday in Carson, Calif., where none of their opponents are ranked in the upper half of their respective preseason polls.
If UHH’s core trio is determined to somehow manufacture a winning season in their final journey, remembering McGown’s lessons and beating a few of those subpar crossover tourney teams would be a good place to start.
