At one point or another, we have all had that experience of going back home again and realizing home didn’t remain frozen in time while we were away.
There was a bit of that experience that brushed against Callen Perreira last fall when he returned to the University of Hawaii at Hilo to once again coach the softball team he had left years earlier in what might graciously be called a difference of opinion between himself and the athletic director.
But when Peejay Brun decided to accept the associate head coaching position at Division I Texas State, the fourth athletic director since Perreira left offered him the job once again. They didn’t even conduct a coaching search after a virtual conga line of full-time, part-time and interim administrators in the intervening years left the department scattered. Perreira was seen as a return to, if not the glory days, at least to a previously successful coach who knows his way around.
Of course, he was ready to return. Perreira had been coaching softball at a community college in Nevada, not far from Las Vegas, where he had relocated since leaving the Big Island and where, of all places in the country, the former UHH AD, Dexter Irvin, also found employment.
Perreira is still there, using that location as a convenient and thrifty way to recruit top shelf players all summer long. You drive an hour or two in a circle around Las Vegas and see more good players in more high quality tournaments than UHH could ever afford to pay for on recruiting trips.
An influx of capable talent is what the Vulcans need after an adjustment season that produced a 26-22 record, not the sort of year Perreira was used to after compiling a 576-345-3 record in 18 years at the school. It was a backward step from the 32-17 record Brun’s team carved out the previous season, but reasons for Perreira’s difficulty were baked into the schedule.
School administrators were unable to find pre-conference games other than the early season tournaments the Vulcans traditionally enter as part of the West Region in Division II. Then, after those tournaments, the schedule gave them no games for 21 days. Right after that, the schedule opened up with the top teams in the Pacific West Conference, bolstered by numerous more games, coming to Hilo in a kind of Murderer’s Row through a revolving door. There was one more slug to the gut when the schedule gave them 10 games in six days.
Have fun with that, coach.
“It is what I inherited,” Perreira said in a telephone interview from Las Vegas, “there wasn’t much we could do to change (the schedule), but after a short while — these are good girls, very respectful — I feel like they all bought in and that was very encouraging for the first year.”
Now that the absurdity of the schedule is in the rear view mirror, there’s reason to think Perreira might be able to rebuild this group into a team that can challenge for the regional tournament, as Brun’s team did in each of her two seasons at the school.
Still, a modest winning season wasn’t what Perreira was after in making his return. He may not talk about it openly in public, but he is very much aware that softball continues to be the most successful program in the athletic department, a legacy he created and one he intends to build on.
“It was a winning record, but we want more than that,” he said. “We want to get to the regionals and win there, or at least be one of the teams that has that opportunity.”
Better yet, the Pacific West Conference might join the other two major Division II conferences on the West Coast and stage a tournament at the end of the season, prior to the start of regionals.
“All the coaches are in favor of a (conference) tournament,” Perreira said. “The other two conferences have it and it keeps them sharp, while our teams wait for a couple weeks. You can lose your edge that way.”
Pacific West Conference commissioner Bob Hogue said the conference “is very supportive of us moving toward getting tournaments in all team sports, that’s where we want to be.
“The challenge,” Hogue said, “is that athletic directors are concerned about, of course, the costs associated with it, missing classes and other issues. I can’t tell you when it might happen — this is under discussion right now — but I can tell you there is growing support for (conference tournaments) and we’re headed in that direction.”
No formatted plans were announced after conference meetings as of the end of last week, but Perreira said coaches would be ready for any number of schools qualifying for postseason play.
“It might be four, six or eight, whatever,” Perreira said. “Anything would be better than to know only the (conference regular season) champion is guaranteed a regional bid.”
In her two years, Brun’s teams would have qualified for a four-team conference tournament that would have provided one last chance to win a championship. Perhaps the regular-season champion wins the right to host the conference tournament. In a six-team tournament, the top two could get byes through the first round.
Such a development can’t come soon enough for Perreira who has been aggressively collecting talent and looking for more, on a daily basis. One is Danielle Cervantes, not just a player described by some as the top player in the state this past season at Campbell High School, she is also a power pitcher, something the Vulcans have lacked in recent years. She struck out 17 against Kamehameha in the quarterfinals, then pitched her team to victories in the semi-final against Mililani and in the title game against Kapolei.
Kiarra Lincoln was an all-BIIF shortstop from Kamehameha Schools Hawaii, and others are entering the program after earning all-state recognition in 2017.
But that’s not enough. Perreira has been taking in tournaments all around Las Vegas with some of the top talent available competing on high-level summer travel teams.
He knows what he has — an all-conference power hitter in Bailey Gaspar, first in the PWC in slugging percentage (.790), home runs (14), and bases on balls (37), second in RBI (52), on-base percentage (,514), tied for third in runs scored (43), you get the idea.
What he lacks is what he has coming in, namely more depth to the pitching staff, more speed throughout the lineup and better defensive players. The Vulcans were ninth in the conference in defense, they very seldom ran the bases and Perreira thinks the lack of speed contributed to the poor defensive effort.
“Speed kills,” he said. “It helps you everywhere, obviously running the bases, but we had so many situations where we couldn’t get to the ball, or we would get close enough to deflect it and not make a play.
“It will be a different team,” he said.
That includes the schedule. Perreira has been working on it after it was orphaned following Brun’s departure.
“I can tell you right now the schedule will be better,” he said. “Three trips to the mainland, some pre-conference games in Hilo that should really help. Right now, I’m looking at 54 games.”
More talent in the areas that were lacking and a reasonable schedule?
Sounds like the necessary ingredients in a recipe for a title chase.
