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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
UH can bring
swimming back
in HawaiiONE of the things that keeps hitting me is how big swimming used to be in Hawaii.
And how big it isn't now.
And if it ever could be again.
It turns out I'm not the only one.
"We want folks buzzing about Hawaii swimming," UH coach Mike Anderson says, "the way they did decades ago."
And buzz they did, in the homeland of Olympians and national champs. Big meets at the old Natatorium were legendary, with the stands full of stomping maniacs and the latecomers hanging off trees in order to get a better look.
Parades welcomed heroes home.
This was the Mecca of the swimming world, where the champions came in waves, one after the other after the other.
And then it stopped, suddenly, mysteriously, like a lost civilization buried in the sands of time.
Babylon.
Machu Picchu.
How?
Why?
"The level of swimming is much, much different," Anderson says. Women's times today would blow away the men of 30 years ago.
"Soichi Sakamoto was a man who was decades ahead of his time," Anderson says.
And the rest of the world caught up.
And maybe Duke Kahanamoku would have been a basketball player today.
(Or a defensive end.)
A great one.
"Everybody's fighting for that same 'A-level' athlete," Anderson says.
"The (ideal) physique for women's swimmers is very similar to the physique for volleyball."
Nobody packs the house to see swimmers.
But they did in Hawaii, once. When Hawaii's swimmers were the best in the world.
What happened? And could it ever happen again?
And Anderson's answer warms the heart.
"I think that's something that UH has to take the lead in," he says.
He's working on it, with a team that's already in the national rankings. And an incoming class that includes a Swedish national champ and Hawaii's first blue-chip American recruit in decades. Of course, none of that matters if no one knows it. This year what we know of UH swimming is that Mike Sheldt died tragically while warming up at practice.
But Anderson envisions better days and better news. Something to celebrate. A product to sell.
He's already seen what big can be. Already felt it.
"When I was at Nevada," he says, "we built it into a standing-room-only event.
"People had to look into windows if they wanted to watch."
The school band was at every meet. The school president was at every meet. Three TV stations were at every meet.
It must have looked like the old nights in Waikiki, when the Natatorium rocked.
Nevada's band knew the school record time for every race. It would play at breakneck speed until it reached that record time, then stop, letting the competitors splash the final meters to the roar of the crowd.
"If you beat the band," Anderson says, "you were flying."
And he says one more thing: "If you can do it in Reno, Nev., you can do it anywhere."
Here?
"You can't say it can't happen again," Anderson says. "Because it can."
Here, where the history is richer than Croesus, where the home pool is named after the Duke.
Where the Natatorium is a lost city of ruins, an archaeological site from an age long ago.
Where now there are only one or two Division I swimming prospects of each gender each year.
Where it's all been forgotten, and has been for a very long time.
Almost.
Michael Woo, Hawaii's last Olympian, is a UH swim booster now. He believes.
And, "Mr. (Al) Minn calls me once a week to make sure I'm doing things correctly," Anderson says with a laugh.
Time to get the kids back in the pool again. Time to get swimming back in the public consciousness again. Time for splashes and shouts again. Time to bring it all back.
There's just something about swimming, Anderson says. Something about being in the pool, and speeding through the water with everything you've got.
"It turns your whole life around," he says.
This is definitely something that UH has to take the lead in.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com