Kaua’i volleyball makes for splendid story of the year

Take this with a grain of salt, if you will.

Obviously, my tenure on the island doesn’t stretch back far enough to allow for the consideration of events prior to August.

That said, the story of the year actually will be the story of the past six months.

But I would happily gander a guess and say that nothing of equally dramatic report happened before I arrived on Kaua’i.

Equal to, that is, the Kaua’i High School girls’ volleyball team unseating Waimea as KIF champions.

It was, as you may recall, the first time in 27 years that a team other than the Menehunes had earned the distinction, the first time another girls’ volleyball team had represented the island at the state tournament, the first time the Waimea machine had malfunctioned.

Intertwined in any great sports story — or any story at all — are the images of its major players.

Picture a provocative play or a dramatic short story.

The characters within make the reader feel, actually trap that reader in a world alternate his own.

In our metaphor, there you’ll find middle blocker Kim Downing or outside hitter Heather Roberts.

The former the court jester; the latter the energetic plot twister.

Then there’s the heroine, Tiana Lum-Tucker.

I asked her teammates; they all agreed.

She was the team’s clutch hitter, the right arm called upon when a kill was desperately needed, a quiet protagonist of sorts.

Of course, most major works of literature do not survive with just three characters.

There were others.

The straight-ahead consistency of outside hitter Danielle Kiyabu; the long-limbed storyline of 5-foot-11 Misty Hug, who, with Downing in the middle, created a backbone of strength.

Naturally, all of these characters would’ve roamed free, wandered, if not for some structure from the play’s director, Rona Nishikawa.

The Red Raiders’ setter served much like a behind-the-scenes force, moving the ball through the offense with an obvious deftness.

The onus fell on her shoulders to successfully carrying out the plot twists of a complicated offense delivered to her by the playwright, Richard Roberts.

The second-year head coach devised the schemes and plans, then sat patiently on the sidelines as his master work unfolded before his eyes.

Oh, there were plenty of pointers given by Roberts, but he clearly possessed confidence in his cast and their director.

He was not pushy; the need for that did not exist.

The storyline was clear and known by all involved: This was to be the year of the Red Raiders.

And it truly was.

Five seniors, Roberts, Downing, Nishikawa, Hug and Kiyabu, oh so close to upsetting Waimea at the tail end of the 1999 season, finally creased the hump.

They were near that junior season; the first time a match had been taken from Waimea in eons.

But the experienced Menehunes held Kaua’i at bay in what was described by the former sports editor of this paper as “a game that will not soon be forgotten by either team.” All of the ladies who would comprise the 2000 Red Raiders squad went to work soon after that loss, prepping mentally for the challenge to come.

For the seniors, it would be the final opportunity to stamp the record books with the definitiveness of a Kaua’i KIF title.

The girls spent all summer playing the storyline out in their heads, individually and collectively.

They hit the gym, and the beach, for those off-season workouts.

They bonded, those 14 girls, into an unbreakable unit, impervious to the penetration of forces yearning to crumble their wall.

Some even traveled with club teams in an effort to hone their craft.

So that when they all came together at the season’s start, in mid-August, the minds already were one.

There was, in fact, a prevailing hush-hush theme in the beginning.

I received only bits of information from the Kaua’i camp; Roberts clearly wanted to keep a cap on the what was dispersed about his team.

It was a shrewd attempt at ambush.

And it worked.

The Red Raiders skated through the KIF first round with nary a flesh wound.

The did not lose a set until mid-October.

The pride was clear in the playwright’s eyes.

Things were unfolding precisely as he’d planned.

There were improvements to be made, he’d say, but he understood his team was about to make history.

Some would say that Waimea did not have its traditional firepower, that it was a down year for the Menehunes.

That as the program had entered a bit of a valley for the year, Kaua’i’s opportunity had to be now.

But that is not incumbent upon the story, really.

Because this season centered more on Kaua’i than anything else.

But, of course, every created piece of art will have its critics.

It’s not really art until there’s argument anyway.

Besides, the Red Raiders proved themselves off-island as well.

They came within a few points of sweeping their pool during the first round of the state tournament, and their one victory came in a crushing straight-set defeat of Molokai, a team that entered the tourney with 18 wins.

And so there is the happy ending, the story of the year, in fact.