PHOTO COURTESY HAWAII-HILO ATHLETICS
Hawaii-Hilo outside hitter Sara Pilgreen's hitting percentage has increased each year of her collegiate career.
With two decades of work as the volleyball coach at Hawaii-Hilo, Sharon Peterson doesn't have time to wait for another winner. Peterson’s Vulcans
all grown up nowBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comBut she is known for her patience, and that patience is what has taken her Vulcans from giant killers to giants-in-training.
In 1999, Peterson was coming off the least successful season of her career, going 5-15 and knowing that something had to be done. So, with the help of assistant coach Guy Enriques, who only spent a single season with the Vulcans, Peterson went out and got a recruiting class worthy of her reputation.
Enriques, who was a Pac-10 co-coach of the year at Oregon State, owned Team Volleyball camps in the Northwest and drew what would in three years become the Vulcans' core to Hilo in Sara Pilgreen, Emily Hutchinson and Megan Denman. Along with Brittany Baum, Tiffanie Ollison and Heidi Fabritz, it was Peterson's largest group of new recruits since she took over the job 22 years before.
Enriques got the players, but Peterson knew what to do with them. She threw her freshmen out onto the floor with equally raw sophomores Ann Haggerty and Cherisse Shiroma and tried to teach her way back to the kinds of seasons those who have followed her career have come to expect.
"They sure gained a lot of experience," Peterson said. "They matured together from Day 1 and have really supported one another. The thing is they came together and clicked immediately."
Although they had their moments, they had to support one another just to survive. Like most high schoolers worthy of playing college ball, they were not accustomed to losing like they did when they first hit the floor in Hilo and needed each other to keep the new experience from driving them crazy. It turned out that Peterson was the perfect coach for Enriques' players.
"I don't think I've ever had a season with that many losses," outside hitter and current kill leader Pilgreen said. "It was frustrating, but Sharon always has a way of putting things so you forget them."
The group suffered its growing pains together, getting three more wins than the previous year's team, then coming together to double that in 2001 with a 16-15 record. The group is all grown up now, and is fourth in the PacWest with a 2-3 record, including an upset of then-unbeaten Brigham Young-Hawaii last week. They will have a chance to move up to third when Chaminade visits this weekend.
For all of Peterson's dwelling on the positive and refining the mental part of volleyball and life, there was one small part of losing that they could not forget. They were skunked 15-0 by Hawaii Pacific in that first year, and vowed that it would not happen again. At that time, HPU and BYUH were running women out to play Hilo's girls and the results verified it. But they never forgot, knocking HPU out of the nation's top spot last year and BYUH out of the No. 2 spot this season.
Now, the Vulcans are the most experienced team in the conference -- even though its core is just turning 21 -- due to the whippings they took in the freshman and sophomore years.
Now, behind the captainship and blocking of seniors Shiroma and Haggerty, the group has been together through enough adversity that they are close to achieving Peterson's annual goal of becoming the most recognizable ball girl in the land.
"I like it when I can step back and be the third shoe, as in not needed," Peterson said. "I'm still there doing things, but they have all the information and know what to do with it. This group is getting closer to that time."
UH-Hilo Athletics
