Posted on: Friday, September 24, 2004

UH's Shoji likely last of rare breed

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Take a real good look Saturday as Dave Shoji coaches his 1,000th University of Hawai'i women's volleyball match. Applaud it. Celebrate it. Remember it.

Because it is something you're unlikely to see again in Manoa.

Not in volleyball, probably not in anything.

It has taken Shoji, the dean of active UH coaches, 30 years to get to the doorstep of being Mr. 1,000. His 998 matches — a remarkable 848-149-1 record — entering Pepperdine tonight and tomorrow is, already, a lifetime-plus in collegiate coaching.

So much so that by the time Shoji eventually steps down, be it in 2007, '08 or thereafter, his enduring longevity and loyalty will be as noteworthy as the gaudy record he compiles.

Shoji is one of the last of a pioneering breed at UH, the brick-by-brick program-builder coach from the 1970s who basically constructed his own program from the ground up. Like former baseball coach Les Murakami and ex-tennis coach Jim Schwitters before him, both had 30-plus years and more than 1,000 victories.

Both took a blank canvas and an imagination and made something huge of it. You don't see those kind of opportunities, or the freedom to pursue them, anymore. Not at UH or anywhere on the Division I landscape.

For one thing, nobody hands a Division I program of consequence to a 27-year-old with little experience as UH did. For another, few are inclined to stick around this long when there are greener pastures to be found.

Moreover, athletic departments have necessarily gone corporate and no program is beyond the mounting budget constraints and competitive pressures. Not even somebody who manages to win 85 percent of their matches, as Shoji has. We want our teams to win with DSL speed and have little patience for anything less.

That hit home in 2002 after the Rainbow Wahine's 23-match win streak came to an end against Stanford. Right after aloha ball hit the floor in Stanford's sweep of the Rainbows, some fans, through e-mail and talk shows, wanted to dump Shoji like a hot rock.

Never mind that Stanford was the best team in the country, a fact it underlined a month later by winning the national championship over the same Rainbow Wahine. Fans want it all. And, they want it immediately. So, too, do administrators, media and chat room inhabitants.

For a lot of reasons, then, "I'd be very surprised if it (1,000 matches for one coach at UH) would happen again," Shoji says.

All of which makes this weekend something to remember because we're unlikely to see anything like it.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.