Sunday, December 18, 2005
SPIKE NETWORK
Folks, last summer I was writing Mariner pieces after as many games as I could (ref. sidebar) before I moved to Hawaii, and as soon as I got settled in and got internet access after I got settled into my place in Hawaii.
Some of those days the Mariner game would get over, and maybe I didn't feel like typing up the Mariner piece right away, since they aren't exactly quick to punch through. So, I'd flip through the channels.
Obviously, no professional sports teams hail from Hawaii or Honolulu. The biggest thing in town (or the state) is University of Hawaii sports. That's why you can see things like live UH women's volleyball live on the local WB affiliate.
So I'm sitting there one day and I'd watched a few of these matches, which are actually a pretty hot ticket in Hawaii. They've been known to draw crowds of 10000 to the Stan Sheriff Center to watch women's volleyball. I watched the Hawaii team tear through a few opponents in the beginning of the season, hang with a really good Penn State team for five games, and beat UCLA.
Then they faced the Huskies, and they got shredded. Granted, the Hawaii team hung with the Huskies a little better in the rematch the next night, but the point was made. The Huskies swept the Rainbow Wahine on back-to-back nights.
Three months later (i.e., yesterday), the same Huskies swept the Nebraska Cornhuskers (who had swept Hawaii very early in the season) three games to zip to win the national title.
My deal here is that if the Husky men's basketball team would have won a title last year, we would have given them props, so why not the volleyball team? It did help that I'd invested some time earlier in the year to actually watching the stuff after the Mariners were done with.
Anyway, congrats to the Huskies. There haven't been that many national titles in Husky history, but now this team's got one.
Some of those days the Mariner game would get over, and maybe I didn't feel like typing up the Mariner piece right away, since they aren't exactly quick to punch through. So, I'd flip through the channels.
Obviously, no professional sports teams hail from Hawaii or Honolulu. The biggest thing in town (or the state) is University of Hawaii sports. That's why you can see things like live UH women's volleyball live on the local WB affiliate.
So I'm sitting there one day and I'd watched a few of these matches, which are actually a pretty hot ticket in Hawaii. They've been known to draw crowds of 10000 to the Stan Sheriff Center to watch women's volleyball. I watched the Hawaii team tear through a few opponents in the beginning of the season, hang with a really good Penn State team for five games, and beat UCLA.
Then they faced the Huskies, and they got shredded. Granted, the Hawaii team hung with the Huskies a little better in the rematch the next night, but the point was made. The Huskies swept the Rainbow Wahine on back-to-back nights.
Three months later (i.e., yesterday), the same Huskies swept the Nebraska Cornhuskers (who had swept Hawaii very early in the season) three games to zip to win the national title.
My deal here is that if the Husky men's basketball team would have won a title last year, we would have given them props, so why not the volleyball team? It did help that I'd invested some time earlier in the year to actually watching the stuff after the Mariners were done with.
Anyway, congrats to the Huskies. There haven't been that many national titles in Husky history, but now this team's got one.
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