Kokua Line
Kokua Line
Coach Wilton’s aide
is men’s team managerQuestion: Who is that girl who sits near coach Mike Wilton at the University of Hawaii volleyball games? You always see her taking notes and passing them on to him. What is she doing? Is she a student?
Answer: Marlo Torres is manager of the men's team, which is a "working scholarship" position she's held for the past four years.
Torres, a 1999 graduate of Waimea High School on Kauai, had played volleyball since the third grade, both for her high school and for a club team, "and I just love the sport," she said. But she didn't go to UH looking to play volleyball.
When she arrived on the Manoa campus as a freshman, she found herself with "a lot of free time," so she asked a friend who had been on the men's team if she could help in any way.
Torres was directed to the coaches. Wilton asked if she was interested in a paying position as a "stats girl," she recalled. "I told him I wasn't looking for a job that paid money -- I just wanted to come out and help and be part of a team. He smiled and said, 'OK, we'll go from there.'"
Torres' "contributions have been an integral part of our success," Wilton says on the team's Web site.
"I go to practice, and at practices I keep stats during drills," Torres explained. "I help time drills. I keep score." She even gets to go on the road with the team.
"During games, I make shot charts" of the opposing team -- plotting where opponents hit the ball, keeping track of where their sets tend to go.
"I write down each play that the other team does," she said. "Then Coach will be able to tell who they are most likely to set and where the guy hits the ball."
She also does clerical work in the office, such as handling travel papers.
Torres is a senior who has been accepted into the school of nursing, so she plans to be around the court for at least another 2 1/2 years. After that, she hopes to become "a traveling nurse," signing up with different agencies to "go wherever you want for maybe six months at a time."
Harano name restored
Gov. Linda Lingle, acting on a petition drive led by Yoshie Tanabe, of Waipahu, will host a reception at Washington Place on Wednesday where she will officially announce re-renaming the H-3 tunnels after former state highways administrator Tetsuo Harano.The tunnels were named after Harano after they were completed in 1994. But former Gov. Ben Cayetano said he felt they should instead be named after the late Gov. John Burns. He signed an executive order leading to the name change last year.
When "Kokua Line" reported last April that Harano was hurt by and did not agree to Cayetano's decision, Tanabe was outraged at what she felt was an insult to a deserving public servant and launched the petition drive. She credited Kongo Kimura with contacting Lingle about the petition during her campaign for governor.
Lingle pledged to restore the Harano name if elected, saying she did not feel it was right that a unilateral decision was made to overturn a legislative resolution calling for the tunnels to be named after Harano.
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Useful phone numbers
Got a question or complaint?
Call 529-4773, fax 529-4750, or write to Kokua Line,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu 96813. As many as possible will be answered.
E-mail to kokualine@starbulletin.com