It's women's volleyball, aka the University of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine!
Something important is happening here that is larger than a sports team with loyal and loving fans. It's about affirmative action and what happens when people truly have equal opportunity, how not only those people are affected but society is changed.
In the first half of this century, women were alternately encouraged to exert themselves physically on behalf of two war efforts and then, when they threatened to take jobs away from returning soldiers, were told to refrain from heavy physical activity because it would damage their brains and reproductive organs.
In the '60s, athletics for girls was limited to physical education or "gym class" once or twice a week.
In 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendment to the Civil Rights Act was passed. This law promised to open the doors to girls who wanted to participate in sports.
Laws are meaningless unless enforced, however, and this one promised to be expensive and inconvenient for school systems.
To fight the law, Minnesota defended its exclusion of girls from school sports on the basis that "men have larger hearts than women and a deeper breathing capacity, enabling them to utilize oxygen more efficiently than women, run faster, based upon the construction of the pelvic area, which when women reach puberty, widens, causing the femur to bend outward, rendering the female incapable of running as efficiently as a male . . . " Right.
Despite substantial resistance, the law prevailed and now women are closing the gap and defying all stereotypes.
In the 1988 Ironman Triathlon on the Big Island, Paula Newby-Fraser ended with a time of 9:01:01, a time that would have beaten all the men in any Ironman prior to 1984.
That same year, Florence Griffith-Joyner set a world record in the 100-meter race. Her time of 10.49 seconds was only about a half second slower than Carl Lewis' record of 9.86 seconds.
In 1989, Susan Notorangelo finished the cycling Race Across America, placing seventh overall. Her time was nine days, nine hours and nine minutes, a time which would have won her first place in 1987.
But the biggest effect is not with endurance events. It's in schools. Once the doors to athletic programs were opened, girls came pouring in. In 1972, girls were 7 percent of the athletes in school programs. Now they are 36 percent.
Nearly 2 million girls play sports in school, compared with 3.4 million boys.
While there were virtually no athletic scholarships for women in 1972, an estimated 10,000 young women entered college on athletic scholarships in 1991. Studies show these women also are more likely to graduate than male peers or the average student.
Women's growing involvement in athletics is not limited to students and the exceptional female athlete. Women of all ages seem to have learned the benefits of sports and physical exercise.
According to a 1991 Sports Illustrated poll, 69 percent of American women are involved in sports or fitness activities - 37.8 million of them walk for exercise, 20 million swim and 14.7 million ride bicycles.
The lives of women and girls are changed as they explore the power and potential of their bodies in new ways.
They are learning to respect and care for their bodies, not as objects to win attention and favors from males but as critical to their enjoyment of sports.
They learn teamwork - to try their hardest because others are counting on them to play with people they don't like.
Athletics also improves self-esteem, self-discipline and risk-taking. Girls are finding new heroes: not the captain of the football team or the rock star but other female athletes.
Studies show that the devastating plunge in self-esteem common to teen-age girls occurs less often when they are active in sports.
No one's done research on it, but my guess is that the girl who is active in sports is less likely to become a prostitute and maybe even less likely to become a battered woman.
This is about more than statistics and women's lives, however. It is a quiet revolution about values and ethics.
Its energy is bubbling up through the cracks of a decaying and corrupt system. O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson are only the most visible evidence of a system where abusive and arrogant sports figures are elevated to hero status and rewarded with multimillion-dollar salaries and advertising contracts.
Although Vince Lombardi reportedly regretted his famous statement, "Winning isn't the most important thing; it's the only thing," this philosophy has become the undeclared motto of a sports industry that many of its most ardent fans find deeply flawed and embarrassing.
In subtle ways, women are changing sports. Aburdene and Naisbitt write in their book "Megatrends for Women" that some of the changes reflect the types of influence women are also bringing to management and other areas of our culture.
The changes could be grouped under the heading of caring, cooperation and tolerance. The female approach to sports:
Rejects the battle, enemy mentality of traditional sports.
Rejects humiliating a player as a means of getting the best out of her.
Stresses nonviolence and discourages play and attitudes that result in injuries.
Places the well-being of athletes ahead of winning.
Is inclusionary, finding space for players of different skill levels.
In her American Coaching Effectiveness Program, Katie Donovan has trained more than 100,000 coaches, mostly male. She reports that most of them reject the above principles at first but, by the end of the course, they often say, "I've been harming my kids. I've been doing it all wrong."
HURRAH for the Wahine, not only for their superb skills and sportsmanship but also for what they are showing us all. The revolution they are part of is worth participating in.
Enroll your daughter and son in some sort of athletic program with coaches that put the child athlete first and empower rather than humiliate and shame.
If you don't have any children, show up at the Ala Wai field below the Marco Polo almost any Saturday morning. You will see little girls with ponytails bouncing as they chase after the soccer ball nearly half their size.
If your heart isn't lifted with joy and goodwill, you may be a candidate for a transplant.