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Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
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So this is how the other half lives
ALL that was missing was Rod Serling and the old "Twilight Zone" theme. Last night's (pay-per-view) episode of Rainbow Wahine volleyball may as well have been in eerie black and white.
Something feels a little off here. Just a little bit weird. Getting run off their own floor, getting the broom in 3. That just doesn't happen. That just feels surreal. Something about that is just plain wrong.
"We were just frozen," Dave Shoji said, "we couldn't do anything right."
People filing out early, instead of rising as one for Aloha Ball.
Something, last night, felt not quite right. Things weren't working. The lineup was patchwork.
Oh yes, the mystery injuries. Tara Hittle with some kind of walking cast on her right foot. Kanoe Kamana'o missing action the previous two nights. The players involved not talking. Everyone else pretty much mum.
Privacy issues, you see. New rules. A different policy. A lot of mystery.
OK, in a way, you can understand that. On some level, it makes sense. Medical issues can be personal. If you had a choice on whether or not the rest of the world could keep inventory on your body, what would you do?
When it comes to being injured the first instinct may be to tell inquiring minds where to stuff it.
But in actual practice secrecy only invites conspiracy theories. Always. Every time.
It makes you hear the "Twilight Zone" ring tone. It makes things weirder than they need to be.
Thankfully, Kamana'o did speak to the media last night, for the first time in a few days. Did she want to tell people what's wrong? "Not really," she said, before allowing it was a "hip injury."
"I'll be playing," she said.
"An injury is not an excuse," she said.
"Ninety percent, ready to go. There's a way to push through it," she said.
Whew! Who else feels a lot better now?
"That's all I can go on," Shoji said. "No one else can tell me how she feels."
Kanoe did come back for Stanford, last night. She started the match, got a rousing ovation. Did everything she could. She didn't seem injured as much as she was just off. They all were. Hawaii went down 15-4 to Stanford, lost 30-10.
"You can tell she hadn't been playing with them," Stanford coach John Dunning said. That you could.
She went out after that first game, and spent the rest of the match with the look on her face you'd have on your face if you were a starter and a captain and had played like that and had been taken out. It's one of those moments in sports that breaks your heart. But it happens to everyone, if you play long enough.
In the next two games Hawaii battled. It was better. There were moments. There was gusto. The crowd tried to will them on.
In the end, it was a sweep.
Can't win with her. Can't win without her. Not on this night.
Stanford is big time (No. 8) and the Wahine were catching the Cardinal at the wrong time.
Injuries. Mystery. Something missing, something off.
It's early (isn't it?). Dunning was optimistic in his forecast. The players sound determined, not defeated. The crowd, more so.
Shoji? "Obviously we're up and down," he said, "and we're not up enough right now." He doesn't blame the players for this. And so he's on it.
It's early. It was a weird outing, but normalcy isn't that far out of sight. We'll soon see if things really are a little bit off. Or if they're off by just a little bit.