ROD THOMPSON / RTHOMPSON@STARBULLETIN.COM
Members of the Hilo Senior Little League team on their return home yesterday displayed the banner they won at the Senior Little League World Series in Bangor, Maine, on Saturday. Flanking the banner on the far left was coach Rob Spencer and, on the far right, pitcher Myles Ioane.
Little Leaguers
return home to Hilo,
families and good food
HILO >> Balloons, banners and rice greeted Hilo's winning Senior Little League team when it got off the plane at Hilo Airport yesterday.
Fresh from winning their division world series in Bangor, Maine, on Saturday, team members hugged their families in a crowd of about 150 people, grinned as they posed for photos, then set to eating plate lunches of laulau, lomi salmon, poi, and rice.
Rosemary Inouye said she spoke earlier to her son Dane.
"He wants to eat rice. He's had enough potatoes up there," she said.
Pitcher Myles Ioane declared, "Potatoes is gross."
Lack of the right food was a hardship on adults with the team, too. Manager Hale Decker said he did not drink any beer on the monthlong trip because there was no poke (spiced raw fish) to eat with it.
Becky Yamashita, mother of team member Jesse Yamashita, said, "I hugged him and told him welcome home. Then he went to eat."
There wasn't much ceremony. The team's Hawaiian Airlines plane passed through an honorary double arc of airport firefighter water streams as it approached the terminal.
County Managing Director Dixie Kaetsu had a welcoming proclamation from Mayor Harry Kim to read. Family members were too busy hugging to listen, so Kaetsu skipped her speech.
Team members and coaches reflected on how Hilo beat other teams from as far away as the Caribbean and Russia.
Many of them have been playing together for as long as four years.
"That's not a typical thing," Ioane said. "We're all tight. We have respect for each other."
As the Hilo team fell behind part way through the championship game against a Virginia team, coach Rob Spencer did the opposite of giving a pep talk. He just told them to relax.
"The bats just came alive," he said. "They were hitting like batting practice."
Decker said, "They were running like horses out there."
The final score was 16 to 8.
The "aloha spirit around the world" came into play, too, Decker said.
"We had a lot of people cheering for us who didn't know who we were," he said.
Discipline was really important, Decker said. And luck.
"You can't win a world series without some luck," he said.
