COURTESY PHOTO
Sanoe Aina, first baseman for the Waipio Little League baseball team, has rejoined her team as it heads into the Little League World Series tourney starting Friday.
Little Leaguer The road to Williamsport, Pa., is a long one, especially for Waipio first baseman Sanoe Aina.
rushes to rejoin team
Sanoe Aina's hectic summer continues
as the only girl in the World SeriesBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comAina boarded a plane at 11 a.m. in Honolulu yesterday to join her mates at the Little League World Series.
Her team, Waipio, beat Coeur d'Alene 5-2 Monday to earn a spot in Little League baseball's most prestigious tournament. The team left San Bernardino for Williamsport at noon yesterday and will play the Worcester, Mass., entrant in the first game of the tournament Friday at 10 a.m. The game will be televised by ESPN2 and their second game will be Sunday at 3 p.m. on ESPN.
Aina played the first three games of Waipio's district tournament, but had to leave the team to attend an elite national track meet in Hershey, Pa., about 50 miles south of Williamsport. She took seventh place in the softball throw and returned home to watch the game on television at home with family, friends and parents who couldn't make the trip.
While her teammates were together in the dugout rallying from one run down, she was gutting it out in front of a television set trying to hear the action above the cheers that go with a two-out rally in the final inning.
"It was hard to watch," Sanoe Aina said. "I was a little bit scared at the end."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Travis Jones of Hawaii's Waipio team pitched against Idaho's Coeur d'Alene team Monday at the Little League Baseball Western Region Tournament. The 5-2 win got Waipio into the World Series.
Although she was forced to be away from her teammates in the district final, there was no way Sanoe Aina was going to miss the Little League World Series.
Against the wishes of the coaching staff, her mother Laurie began looking for airline tickets to Williamsport before Waipio even earned a spot in the regional championship game.
"Don't tell the coaches, because it is against Waipio's philosophy to think about anything but one game at a time, but I was planning on them winning all along," Laurie Aina said.
Even with her optimism and advanced planning, finding a flight was not easy. The family left for Lihue, Kauai, this morning to fly to Los Angeles because that was the only flight available.
When the World Series ends and she returns to Hawaii, Sanoe Aina's incredible summer will still not be over. She will have to start her first day at a new school -- Our Lady of Good Counsel in Pearl City -- with catcher Isaac Moises. They could end up missing the first two weeks.
But she will certainly be used to the stares of peers who wonder what she is all about.
When Sanoe Aina arrived at the players' complex in Williamsport, she was the only girl in the entire tournament, something that worries her mother until she remembers just what kind of girl she raised.
"I don't know what kind of reaction she will get from boys from other countries," Laurie Aina said. "But she has always been kind of a tough skin. She will get up there and hit a home run and show them who she is."
