Trapasso has high
hopes for tourney

The Hawaii coach wants
to see the Easter Tournament
return to its glory days

Yamashita goes the distance

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By Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.com

One of the projects facing first-year Hawaii baseball coach Mike Trapasso is the Rainbow Easter Tournament.

Often when a new administration takes over, the first things that go to the junk yard are the ones done simply for the sake of tradition. But rather than scrapping the 27th annual event, Trapasso wants to restore the tournament to its former glory.

"I've been very cognizant of keeping the traditions of the program," Trapasso said. "I don't want to change the tournament, I just want to make it what it once was."

Trapasso wants to return the event to what it was in the mid-1980s when powers like Wichita State and Georgia Tech battled for the title, and the field was so good that the Rainbows went seven years without a crown.

Trapasso figures he can get the tournament back to its former prominence with one slight adjustment -- taking the Easter out of the tournament.

"We have to change the time to earlier in the season," Trapasso said. "I want to move it to either the first week of March or the last week of February before conferences are in league play."

The problem is real enough that Trapasso said he has only two other teams -- Air Force and Western Illinois -- committed for next year, and is scrambling for a third. There just aren't too many teams out there that have a bye week after their conference seasons begin. Scheduling the tournament around Easter was not as big a problem for former UH head coach Les Murakami in the glory days because it was before conferences expanded by teams and games.

Georgia Tech and Miami could have been in this year's tournament, but ran into the timing problem that would be corrected by holding it earlier. The schools are playing each other in non-conference play this week, but go right into league play next week.

Trapasso offered to fly both of them to Hawaii for the tournament, but they did not want to go into important conference games still bleary from a flight across the country. Conference games have become so important that they take precedence over everything.

When Trapasso does move the tournament, he believes that he will be able to pick and choose who participates, rather than take any team willing to come. He has already drawn interest from schools like Stanford, Clemson and Notre Dame for 2004, when he plans on changing it.

"It's not a hard sell," Trapasso said.

But as the strength of the field rises, the hopes of the Hawaii-Hilos and Hawaii Pacifics fall. Trapasso says that he won't save spots for local teams just because they are local, but they are welcome as long as they can compete on the field. This is Hilo's 11th Easter Tournament, while HPU is participating in its fifth. Neither has won the tournament.

Just because they don't compete in Division I doesn't mean that HPU and Lewis-Clark State, which has won this event four times in 13 appearances, can forget about participating in the tournament. They just will probably not be able to be in a tournament together.

"I'd like to have Lewis and Clark out here every year," Trapasso said. "The problem with that is that the WAC only allows us two non-D-I games a year. Teams in major conferences would rather not play any non-D-I games at all."

Because it is so hard to schedule teams now, a lot of Trapasso's effort will go toward keeping the tournament alive in 2003, before hooking up the respirator in 2004.

Then the tournament will take care of itself again.

"I just want to get the tournament back to what it was, with two or three Top 10 teams," Trapasso said. "We should be able to do that just by moving it to a time when more teams are available."

Hawaii's favorite guests G W L PCT Lewis-Clark State 94 58 38 .617 Hawaii-Hilo 81 26 55 .321 Wichita State 80 63 17 .787 Portland State 46 22 24 .478 Nebraska 40 19 21 .475 Hawaii Pacific 40 10 30 .250 Tournament champions Year, team 1975: Hawaii; 1976: Hawaii; 1977: Hawaii; 1978: Santa Clara; 1979: Hawaii; 1980: Hawaii; 1981: Hawaii; 1982: No tournament; 1983: Wichita State; 1984: Lewis-Clark State; 1985: Wichita State; 1986: Georgia Tech; 1987: Wichita State; 1988: Lewis-Clark State; 1989: Wichita State; 1990: Hawaii; 1991: Wichita State; 1992: Meiji; 1993: Hawaii; 1994: Hawaii; 1995: Meiji; 1996: Hawaii; 1997: Wichita State; 1998: Nebraska; 1999: Hawaii; 2000: Lewis-Clark State; 2001: UC Santa Barbara/Lewis-Clark State.

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UH Athletics