They’ve been good, and getting better these last couple of seasons, but it wasn’t so long ago that softball at UH-Hilo looked like a program that had arrived.
It had. They were good beyond reasonable expectations, and they were appreciated.
Coach Cal Perreira remembers and thinks it can all be recreated. For starters, he has arranged an event he’s calling the Vulcan Softball Fall Preview, Sunday at 12:30 pm at the newly refurbished field, free admission. The idea is to show off the new look and throw some talent on the field that the Big Island softball community will appreciate.
There was winning, lots of it when Perreira coached the team from 1990-2009. The Vulcans were back-to-back champions of the PacWest in 2004 and ’05 and they made three NCAA Division II West Regional playoffs.
Perreira, back this season after his friend Peejay Brun took a top assistant’s job at Division I Texas State, intends to win like that all over again. The team Brun left after two years was on the doorstep of the PacWest tournament and returns all-American third team power hitter Bailey Gaspar, PWC first team first baseman Cristina Menjivar and more. Perreira brought in a couple other players he expects will play a lot, right away, but that’s only part of his vision.
An island native, Perreira wants to fill the hill.
“Out there in right field,” he said last week, “that’s where you would see the overflow of fans when the bleacher seats were all filled. It made it pretty exciting, noisy, really, it was fun.
“I would like to see that again,” he said.
After Perreira left following a disagreement on departmental priorities with former athletic director Dexter Irvin, the local connection was severed. Losses piled up, mainland players took most of the roster spots that had been filled by statewide players, fans found other things to do.
It started to build again with Brun, raised in Kauai, but she had been gone so long, coaching collegiately in New York and Texas, the local community wasn’t there for her.
Perreira thinks that local support is still there, ready to be tapped once again.
“The whole purpose is to let the community know we’re here and we want to get them back,” he said. “We are here for those people, we want to appeal to the talent we have right here, that will always be the goal, to showcase the best players we have.”
Changes are in progress throughout the roster, thanks to a staff that includes six assistants and can provide personal attention that wasn’t available for Brun’s small staff of one full-time and one part time assistant.
“We all miss Peejay,” said Gaspar, “that’s just the way it will be, we were all so close with her, but we understand what happened, we’re happy for her and yeah, it’s a lot different this year.”
Not so much for Gaspar, who drives the ball with such authority, the new hitting coaches tend to tell her to keep doing what she’s been doing and leave it at that.
Others are benefitting from the attention, including Billi Derleth, a freshman last year who wound up throwing 130.1 innings, tops on the staff, with physically debilitating mechanics. Her delivery involved a sweeping, sidearm motion that came across her body and finished up by her left shoulder, when it should have been straightforward, close to the right hip, finishing high up on the right side, no across-the-body delivery.
“Peejay told me about it last year,” Derleth said, “but I didn’t want to try to change everything I was doing during the season. It made my shoulder sore, it was kind of painful, definitely.”
She worked with a pitching coach in the offseason and received more tips when she met Perreira.
“He knows pitching,” she said. “It feels so much better now, like I could pitch all day.”
That’s not supposed to be part of the drill, as Perreira has four pitchers he hopes will compete to the point that they are interchangeable, and that’s also part of the Fall Preview.
Sure, the idea is to let people see the new signage on the outfield fence, wrapped in black with the Vulcans logo in centerfield, all trimmed on top in red. There’s fresh paint on the padding behind home plate and the stands brighten the place up and there are plans to cover the bleacher area before the season starts. Some of the trees behind the outfield fences were taken down which opens the field to more sun, which will help dry the playing field quickly after a shower.
Sunday is designed for fun, but for the players, it won’t be frivolous. The Vulcans have a fall ball doubleheader scheduled against Hawaii-Manoa — on Maui — six days after the dress rehearsal.
“We need to learn some things about our players,” Perreira said. “We will take 16 on the road and that means not everyone can go. Do we take all four pitchers, are they all that close?
“We don’t have a starting lineup completely set just yet,” he said, “but when we get there, who are the best ones we have who can play multiple positions? Those are the ones you would likely take on a road trip to give your lineup some versatility.”
A day of fun, a dress rehearsal of sorts for the new/old program, a perfect platform for someone to make a statement about playing time.
If the players take the competitive urge seriously, the fans will respond, it’s in their nature, they just need a reminder and some evidence.
Fill the Hill? They might already be printing t-shirts.
