The Way I See It
AND, the lists begat lists. SI’s list of Hawaii’s top
athletes not completeTop 50, top 100 of the century.
Every publication and every sports bar denizen has one.
Sports Illustrated kind of out-did itself by not only naming its worldwide top 50 for the century but a top 50 for every state in the country.
To properly select every state's sports immortals is quite an undertaking. You have to have a dedicated staff of researchers or at least a very good source in each state.
I know it's easy to sit and criticize SI for trying this. But I have to wonder how much time was spent on the list of "the 50 greatest sports figures from Hawaii."
Some of the information is inaccurate and some of the state's greatest names are left off the list.
You'll notice that American 5,000-meter record setter and sub-4-minute miler Duncan Macdonald, who grew up here and attended Punahou, is not on the list .
Nor is another Punahou grad, Henry Marsh, a four-time Olympian who set a U.S. record in the steeplechase and also ran a sub-4-minute mile.
Akebono, Hawaii Kai's Chad Rowan, is nominated. But where's Musashimaru, Waianae's Fiamalu Penitani? Penitani followed Rowan as the second foreigner to become a sumo grand champion in Japan.
HOW about Maui's Soichi Sakamoto? His absence from the list is especially puzzling since we're on the verge of another summer Olympics.
Sakamoto was the man behind Hawaii's golden era in Olympic swimming in the 1940s and 1950s. He coached Olympic gold and silver medalists Bill Woolsey and Ford Konno, gold medalist Bill Smith and bronze medalist Evelyn Kawamoto Konno.
Konno is on the list but not the other medalists.
How important is Sakamoto? Well, remember that Hawaii hasn't even placed a swimmer on the U.S. Olympic team since 1976.
Sad Sam Ichinose was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1984 but he's not on the list.
SI seems to imply that its state lists contain "hometown heroes."
But some of the Hawaii sports figures named were not even living in Hawaii when they accomplished their qualifying feats.
Aileen Riggin Soule is certainly an American sports treasure as a pioneer medal winner in women's Olympic swimming and diving. But she'll be the first to tell you that she didn't move to Hawaii until about three decades after she won her medals in 1920 and 1924. She lived in New York back then.
Cal Lee is listed for having coached "13 consecutive state football championships." Of course, we know there has only been one state championship. The 13 referred to are really Prep Bowls.
Brian Viloria, who won the world amateur light flyweight title this year, is by far the youngest person named among Hawaii's greatest sports figures.
But we can easily predict this young man's greatest feats are still ahead of him as he prepares to win gold in Sydney.
The thing about the end-of-the-century lists is that they make us put into perspective the term, "greatest."
It's used so often to describe a person or a feat, but it's hardly ever applied properly.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.