The more people you talk to about the Haili Volleyball Tournament, the more the stories converge around a common thread that defines, not just the week of matches involving contestants from both genders and all ages, but the truth of living in our spot in the Pacific Ocean.
At some point, it all gets back to ohana, and it’s usually a brief stroll, like the one traveled by Kawehi Naki, who will spend the week competing for the All Attitude women’s B team.
“I started playing at 5 or 6 years old,” Naki said last week, “it was part of our family, it’s just what we did.”
Her father, Brian played and coached, she played on youth league teams, competed throughout high school and these days, living in Volcano, it’s still important enough for Naki to find the time and interest to play on her adult team, though most of her teammates live in Hilo.
She played basketball and softball, but in the end, after school, after family, volleyball remained.
“I guess it’s because it’s the one I really grew up with,” she said, “and it’s different from the others in that it’s not really a contact sport, but if you have to hit the ground to dig out a ball, you hit the ground. For me, volleyball takes precedence over the other sports, I keep coming back.”
Just like the Haili Tournament itself, opening Monday for the 59th renewal, running all week at Hilo Civic, UH-Hilo gym, Hilo Armory and Kawananakoa gym.
Lyndell Lindsey has a slightly different, but significant version of the ohana theme. She’s been playing since the age of 12 in this tournament, which was started by her father.
“The idea was to increase interest in (volleyball) by putting on a tournament, getting people out to see it,” Lindsey said, “and after that, it just grew.”
She could have added, “and grew, and grew and grew.”
This year’s entrants include teams from Guam and Samoa, but over the years, increased acceptance of the sport on the mainland and travel costs to the islands have worked together to diminish the number of teams that enter Haili, once considered the unofficial World Series of Volleyball. There are tournaments all around the country in the 21st century and several pathways to compete for nationals, whereas this Big Island tournament was once the most prized recruiting ground for college coaches as well as the showcase for the best teams in the United States.
“For a lot of kids on the island, this was a testing ground, a place you could play and show off your skills and maybe attract the attention of a college scout,” said Eddie Kalima, an assistant on Tino Reyes’ University of Hawaii at Hilo women’s volleyball team. “When it started, it was all Big Island teams, we didn’t even have anything from Honolulu, but that changed, for sure. There were older men’s teams, younger teams, then it expanded and involved everyone, men, women, all ages, different skill levels.”
Kalima benefited from a volleyball and basketball scholarship to BYU-Hawaii — Church College of Hawaii back then — where he competed in both sports, oddly enough, at 5-foot-11, playing center in basketball. Had he been 6-11 instead of 5-11, things may have worked out differently, but Kalima graduated smoothly into a life of volleyball.
“It’s who we are here,” Kalima said, “volleyball is our sport, it’s connected to family and its been generational for most of us, we all seem to have grown up with parents and older brothers and sisters playing and it just becomes natural.”
There was more to it than simple recreation, said Luella Aina, a longtime competitor, on the organizing committee these days.
“It really helped build up our economy in Hilo,” Aina said. “It started here, Hilo teams, and it just got bigger and bigger and then national-level teams started coming, national players, national officials.
“Volleyball would not be as big, from a national concept, without the Haili Tournament,” she said. “When schools started forming teams on the mainland, they would send coaches here to recruit players.”
There are many places to see talented players these days, but while the old practice of recruiting at the Haili doesn’t retain the same intensity it once did, that impulse hasn’t vanished.
“Two years ago I sat in the stands watching and I noticed the man next to me taking a lot of notes,” Aina said. “He was a scout from a school back east, and he found two players he later signed.”
Opportunity and ohana, it’s what Haili is all about.
