Eight years after leaving the Big Island for high school on Oahu, Tai Manu-Olevao finds herself at the crossroads, once again.
Eight years after leaving the Big Island for high school on Oahu, Tai Manu-Olevao finds herself at the crossroads, once again.
It was like this for the senior at UH-Manoa when she first moved to Oahu where her older brothers John and Sam lived, as well as her older sister, Poli. Her brothers attended Kohuku but Tai enrolled at Punahou and began a brilliant high school athletic career that included three league championships and one state title in volleyball.
Back then, she made the right decision.
“I hadn’t really settled on volleyball,” Manu-Olevao said this week after a match with her team A Mothers Prayer at the 59th annual Haili Volleyball Tournament at the Hilo Civic, “but I always liked volleyball, it was all around me growing up. My mom played softball and wanted me to try, so I did and it was fun, then my brothers wanted me to play basketball because I had some size (6-feet tall), and I did that my senior year.
“But when it came down to it, I knew I had to play volleyball, it was a part of me, even by then,” she said.
Though she didn’t play high school volleyball on the Big Island, Manu-Olevao remains in a small circle of the best players to ever emerge from Hilo.
At Manoa, she was an outside hitter for the Rainbow Wahine selected to the all-Big West first team in her junior and senior seasons, an elemental force on the team who could drive the ball with ferocity. In the Haili tournament, eyes follow her around the court. One spectator Thursday, unaware of who she was, let out a loud, “Wow,’ when Manu-Olevao stretched out and slammed a point home. “She must have been one of those Manoa players.”
She surely was, and this week she was playing in Haili for only the second time. She played once before moving to Oahu because the whole family played.
It is still about ohana.
Older sister Poli is one of the organizers of A Mothers Prayer — they don’t use the apostrophe in the name — and also serves as a coach. The organization centers in the Hilo-Panaewa area and has as its mission channeling keiki into volleyball, but not just any keiki.
A Mothers Prayer works with at-risk families and families where one or both parents are incarcerated. Poli sees volleyball as a way out.
“We get them involved, we coach them, take them to clinics, put them on teams with kids so they feel a part of that team, like a second family,” she said. “Between clinics, tournaments and practices, we keep them busy all year, with the goal of feeling a part of something bigger than themselves, and hopefully, college scholarships or at least a college that will let them try out.”
Poli’s younger sister got that opportunity at Manoa in one of the most gorgeous respected women’s volleyball programs in the country, led by coach Dave Shoji, one of the most prominent names in the sport.
“A lot of people say a lot of things about Dave Shoji,” Manu-Olevao said, “but I’ll say this for him — he gave me a chance, he gave me a chance to compete and that isn’t always the case with Hawaii girls, so I’m grateful for that.”
The Rainbow Wahine always carry the island’s image with them, but a closer look at the roster shows a Shoji trend of recruiting heavily on the mainland. Eight of the 15 players on this year’s roster were from California, Washington, Canada or Germany. Only seven were from the islands.
These days, Manu-Olevao is having fun playing in the Haili tournament while she’s back at those crossroads again, personally.
She has an agent scouring for professional teams that might want her services, at the same time she’s considering an LDS mission.
“Whatever happens, happens, she said, “I will be happy either way. During my senior season I was definitely thinking, ‘What now?’ But I’m going to give it some time to see how it all works out.”
She will graduate in June with a degree in family resources and around that time, she expects her agent to have compiled some possibilities for professional volleyball.
Until then, she’s loving life and playing volleyball.
No matter which path she takes, those things won’t likely change.
Championships in Women Master 45s and 30s, Women B, Women A and Women AA will be played on Court 1 at the Civic from 9 a.m. and Men B, Men Masters, Men A and Men AA will play on Court 2 from 10:15 a.m.