It may not have been the final visit, but it represented the conclusion of a phase of Lindsey Poulsen’s life Saturday when she visited Hilo and got to see her former college team play its last match of the season.
Three years since she last wore the Vulcans’ colors in an NCAA match, Poulsen has renewed the fight of her life against a strain of ovarian cancer that she had on the run just a few months ago with a clean bill of health in June.
“It’s a process,” she said a couple hours before the UHH women ended their season with a 2-1 victory over Chaminade. “They told me it would come back again, so you just get back into that mode. It isn’t as scary as it was (when she first learned of the cancer), but it does get frustrating.
“What happens is, you get better, you find this new happiness when (the cancer is) gone, and then it comes back and you go back, I don’t know, you go back to being aware of dying.”
Next week, Poulsen will move from Honolulu, where she has been doing accountant work on a remote basis — a job she can continue after the move — to the San Jose area where she grew up. There, she will be close to Stanford, where she will receive her care, then back-and-forth to Reno, Nevada, on occasion, where her parents now live. Her chemo now comes in pills she takes every morning and there are new drugs specifically for her particular strain of cancer that hold promise.
The fight is on, once again. How serious? What stage is it?
“They don’t even talk about that any more,” she said. “It takes what it takes, day-by-day.”
This trip was heartfelt in that Poulsen got to see her last Vulcan teammate, goalie Jenna Hufford, a close friend who has shared Poulsen’s story with virtually everyone she knows. There were hugs and tears, some who hadn’t met her said hello, others were saying goodbye.
“At this point, I really don’t know many of them,” she said of the Vulcans, “but they are so sweet and friendly, it’s been very cool coming back again. I’ll always be a Hilo fan as long as Gene (Okamura, an assistant when Poulsen attended UHH and has since coached the men’s and women’s teams), Terry (Yamane, assistant coach) and Landon (Salvador, assistant coach), are still around, but my trips here will decrease, for sure.”
That’s unfortunate because, apart from her status as one of the few Vulcans to receive all-conference recognition in recent years, Poulsen is a kind of walking advertisement for the Big Island, and Hilo, in particular.
“It feels the same here,” she said, “it’s good old Hilo and you either love it or you don’t, but it can be a pretty nice, I’ve always loved it here.
“We are always an underdog,” she said of UHH soccer, “and you have to understand that, but I always felt like we were more of a family here. We know the odds against us, everyone we play has more scholarships and their own fields and all that, but we have always had a competitive spirit that carried us.”
Poulsen despairs about the future, concerned as are a lot of people, that a continuance of the six-year slide in enrollments may lead to the end of athletics in a university so financially strapped it can’t provide adequate practice facilities for baseball, soccer and basketball.
But those hard realities don’t change what she feels the Vulcans are all about.
“Strive to prove people wrong and love what Hilo has to offer,” she said. “You’re in Hawaii, it’s beautiful, take that underdog role and go surprise people.”
It has been like that since the first day of the first soccer practice at the school. The soccer program started in a competitive disadvantage, fewer scholarships than the other schools in the conference, one coach for each team in the same season, always seeking spots to practice off campus.
“It would have been nice (to have an acceptable practice field on campus),” Poulsen said, “but this is Hilo, I look at as we got to practice a lot down at the Bayfront, it’s so pretty down there.”
Her perspective is to realize that UHH is starting at a distinct disadvantage, but that reality should bring out the competitor in an athlete, and when you get that in an idyllic setting? It all coalesces into a Hilo Thing.
“We always struggle on the road, those long trips to California and Utah were really tough,” she said, “but we always make the best out of our games here and we always tried to be hard to play against.
“Then, when we traveled we wouldn’t get it easy. I remember one time we played in Utah (at Dixie State), and it was like 8 a.m., or about 4 a.m. our time. We were all like, ‘Really? What’s this?’
“But you just go on,” she said, “you go compete.”
Her closest Hilo friends, former teammates Nicole Stratham and Hufford, will always be close, probably closer than they have ever been as she faces this next battle.
If there were an image of the battling spirit that can spark a fire of athletic intensity inside a Vulcans’ athlete, the prime example would be Lindsey Poulsen, an athlete and role model whose jersey number 22 is worthy of retirement. They won’t likely get many like her, but if they do, it might be because they heard about Lindsey Poulsen and her fight.
“A message?” she said, repeating the question about UHH athletes. “To anyone thinking about coming here, I would say, ‘Embrace the underdog, love what Hilo has to offer and be determined to prove people wrong, and do your 120s’.”
That last reference is to a training run known to every UHH soccer player. Choose to accept the reality, face it head on and test your resolve.
At some point, up may find you are training for something more than the next soccer match.
There’s a life to live and battles to fight, for everyone.
Tips? Questions? Email Bart at barttribuneherald@gmail.com
