Apologies for being late on the proper recognition of recent developments that carried Waiakea and Honokaa high schools to BIIF boys’ basketball championships. ADVERTISING Apologies for being late on the proper recognition of recent developments that carried Waiakea and Honokaa
Apologies for being late on the proper recognition of recent developments that carried Waiakea and Honokaa high schools to BIIF boys’ basketball championships.
Championships are always significant, but behind these two titles is something worthy of more public recognition, including the involvement of the University of Hawaii at Hilo, in support of its men’s basketball program.
This should be a time for malama at the university, an example of what can be achieved with local involvement in the athletic department and the kind of return that benefits the community and reflects the better angels of the school.
More on that to come, first, consider what these two teams represent for the Big Island and the school on the hill in Hilo.
The pride of the Big Island and of the men’s basketball program at UHH is evident in the contributions of coaches Jayme Carvalho (Honokaa) and Paul Lee (Waiakea), who guided their teams to titles. Each a former Vulcans players, they share a belief that the game isn’t an end in itself, it is a vehicle for life lessons. Grown here, educated here, they learned what basketball can do in their times at UHH and they have taken those lessons back to the community.
What’s better than that? What’s better for the Big Island than Carvalho and Lee becoming teachers and coaches right here at home, teaching what they learned at UHH, becoming leaders in the community and developing champions?
As far as anyone can recall, Carvalho and Lee are the first former UHH players who stayed home and led their teams to championships, in the same year.
“Back then,” said Lee of his time at UHH from 1991-95, “there probably wasn’t a lot of other entertainment, but we had some pretty good teams and we had some great crowds, those Hilo crowds really can get behind you.
“It’s disappointing to see what’s happened to the crowds,” he said, “but you can’t expect them to compete much if you have half the deck of everyone else.”
Lee, referencing the deep issue of underfunding athletics at UHH — men’s basketball gets about 5.5 scholarship equivalencies in a system that allows 10 — is a local guy who wanted to see if he could make a change from within. He lost seven players from last year’s team and this year they regrouped and repeated as BIIF champion, completing the season with just three losses.
Call him crazy, Lee thinks the attention to detail in coaching and working the process over time is going to develop more players for the Vulcans. He believes that, because he knows it’s possible. He did it. He thinks others can.
For the second year in a row, Lee was named Coach of the Year for his team that defeated Konawaena 68-66 in the BIIF Division I championship and his point guard, Calvin Mattos, was named Player of the Year for a third time. Mattos may have a chance to compete for a roster spot at UHH in the fall.
“It takes time and consistency,” said Lee, who started coaching at Waiakea in 2009, “but I believe we can develop some more kids here who can play at a D-II level, but I know it will be a shock for them. They think it’s a small step, but it’s a much bigger step than they realize.
“It can happen,” he said. “Summer camps, a summer league would be good, more instruction, more involvement, we can get there. We might not have players every year (for UHH), but we can get to a place, I think, where we can make the Vulcans take a look.”
Carvalho, a product of an ohana deeply immersed in the plantation life — his grandfather worked sugar cane for 50 years, his father for 16 — knows about hard work and believes what he learned can be transferred to the young ones he coaches at Honokaa, where they were 20-14 a year ago, 23-12 this year, with a BIIF Division II title. Has anyone in the state played 69 games in the last two years? Carvalho, a Vulcans’ player from 1994-98, only wishes they could have played more.
This past season was a relevant example. Their gym floor had been damaged when a pipe broke and water flooded in, buckling the floor. This was a team, effectively without a home all season. They practiced at the sports complex in Honokaa, never really had their own lockers or that home cooking comfort teams live on.
And they just kept winning.
“It’s hard, and that’s the point,” Carvalho said. “You have to have the kind of people you can get to buy in to hard work, and if you get that, you can have a great season.
“To see the growth we had this year, to see these character guys we had who put in the work and then had it pay off? That’s really what it’s all about, it’s all you can ask for.”
That goes on and off the court. This year, Carvalho’s 16 players averaged a 3.25 GPA, the kind of stuff that makes it easier to find a receptive college.
Change here comes gradually. Carvalho and Lee developed a youth-level love for basketball, the game spoke to them in ways they could understand and the more they learned, the more they wanted to know.
The more they knew, the more they challenged themselves to get their abilities to the new level they sought. UHH legend Jimmy Yagi was a mentor to both of them, but they learned from others, Lee got a lot of Xs and Os understanding from former coach Bob Wilson.
That part has changed. Today, if a young mind is willing, there are hundreds of basketball coaching videos available just a few click away on the Internet. Games are broadcast daily around the world if you want to see how it’s done at a higher level.
But there’s something more integral to the Big Island that can make basketball work, and that’s ohana and the concept of being in a struggle.
Young players here will always be compared to those on Oahu with its population of more than a million, or they will be compared to those on the mainland, living in neighborhoods full of camps, coaching and training opportunities.
But this isn’t like Oahu or the mainland, the culture here doesn’t grow around a city with a million people, we help each other, we play the long game, knowing that nothing changes overnight. We try to do things with a common purpose of respect.
That’s why it would do the University well to consider a way to shine a light on people like Lee and Carvalho. This isn’t Duke, Michigan State or North Carolina, you won’t see busts and statues and grand proclamations about all the NBA superstars who have come through the Vulcans’ basketball program.
What we have, as represented by these two coaches, is actually something more meaningful to our community. If you are a moderate income family in North Carolina, those NBA stars aren’t in your life, they have no immediacy to your ohana or keiki.
It would be a good gesture if the school took the pride in its graduates to hang plaques on the wall of the school gym — maybe it could be called Vulcan Educators. The idea would lean on education, which seems a reasonable thing for a university, and you wouldn’t have to win championships, just be a graduate who came through UHH.
There would be separate sections for men’s and women’s basketball and for volleyball. All the players who came through these programs and have gone on to be educators — coaches, administrators — in public schools could be recognized, a visual reminder for everyone who walks through the door that education and athletics are intertwined at the school.
To have your own students believe in the possibilities of education so strongly that they devote their life’s work to it? That’s worth memorializing on campus in a prominent spot like the place they practice every day.
It might even encourage others to follow in that path, educating, inspiring and leading, right here at home on the Big Island.
