COMMENTARY
Bitter pill for UH to swallow

By David Polhemus
Advertiser Editorial Writer

What a shock to the University of Hawai'i men's volleyball team and its many fans! We're stripped of the only NCAA men's championship we ever won.

It's hard to argue with a dismayed former UH outside hitter Tony Ching, who points out that his team won where it counts, on the court: "Everybody saw it. We won fair and square."

Too bad it's not what happened on the court that's in question, but who was on the court, representing UH. No one seems to dispute the fine print, that the team fielded a player who kept quiet about his semi-pro experience.

There's no mystery about this to Jizelle Yates, a 20-year-old UH soccer player: "It's a rule," she said. "So you've got to be penalized. As an athlete you're supposed to know all the rules."

Nobody said that was easy. "The fact is," said yates, "there are thousands" of rules. Which is why UH has an athletic director and — first I'd heard of her — an associate general counsel.

What impresses me is there's been no whining from the UH athletic department, of the sort we used to hear nearly every season when a UH team with a lackluster record was passed over for the last slot in a tournament or bowl game.

In its appeal, UH plans to argue not against the "secondary" infraction itself, but the ton of bricks that was dumped on UH as a penalty. Because the rule in question is a very gray area of evolving interpretation, I wish UH every success in its appeal.

If you think this rule is clear, you might explain to me how come college volleyball players can play pro two-man beach volleyball without losing their eligibility or why Michelle Wie will be able to play NCAA golf despite having competed on a golf course full of professionals — as long as they don't get paid.

But UH knew it had bought this bag when it decided to lead the nation in recruiting athletes in Europe (it has 70 international student athletes). As Advertiser columnist Ferd Lewis makes clear, the player in question, Costas Theocharidis, was listed in the school's own media guide as having played for a Greek "club."

Add to that the difficulties already experienced with a couple of international basketball players, who ran afoul of the same rule.

It does no good to blame Theocharidis, even though he had opportunities to own up to his background. "How many foreign athletes," wondered Lewis, "when confronted with a question that could cost them a subsidized education are going to willingly assist in their own departure?"

I have to agree with my former colleague, Peter Rosegg, who thinks "there is something very wrong in a collegiate athletic system that would penalize the whole men's volleyball team, while barely scratching the seamy surface of the shenanigans that go on in big-time college sports across the Mainland."

Maybe he's also right in saying "the UH was better off having had Costas as a student and an athlete than it is having a trophy in a case, painful as the loss may feel today."

It's a bitter pill, but we must learn to be better for the experience.

You can reach David Polhemus through letters@honoluluadvertiser.com.