of these US mainland matches back to Hawaii. I should also note that as early at the 1990’s KFVE-TV in Honolulu also carried a majority (if not all) home Volleyball matches from the Stan Sherriff Arena; the 10,000 seat on-campus facility at the university but none from the US Mainland due to the substantial satellite broadcast costs of sending the TV feedback to Hawaii.
So radio in Hawaii has and will always be the predominant form of sports radio coverage of the Hawaii teams on the US Mainland. By the tens of thousands, Hawaiians will listen to every call of every play the Rainbow Volleyball teams face, be it from UC San Diego, UCLA or Long Beach State. The more prominent the opponent – like the UCLA Bruins or USC Trojans – of course the greater the audience. Everywhere you go in Honolulu when the Rainbow Volleyball team is on the air live from more than 2,500 miles away on the US Mainland, be it in a Oahu shopping mall, drug store or driving across the H1 Interstate Highway.
In Hawaii …radio is king!
So it was that my first introduction to the University of Hawaii sport community came at the WIVA Championships with Alan Rosehill coaching the Rainbows in the first round of tournament competition. Since all of the broadcast equipment that I was familiar with for the BYU home Volleyball broadcasts belonged to Bob McGregor, and he was in 700 miles away in Salt Lake City, I connected with Iverson who was finishing a broadcast of University of Hawaii Basketball in San Diego and he lent me his broadcast set-up, including sound mixer board ad headsets. We had a good first meeting. The next night was the WIVA championship broadcast and Iverson’s Honolulu office faxed the radio log to me that I was to follow meticulously. The Rainbow Sports Radio Network had dozens of paid advertisers and voice-over drop in that was to be read, verbatim, during each game and throughout the match. This also included the pre- and post-match shows.
Everything was programed in.
***
One of the very cool things I liked about broadcasting sports for the University of Hawaii was that I could wear an Aloha shirt to the game - one of the most outlandish garments ever known to man - but one that looks great on you, be it on one of the Hawaiian islands or anywhere in the world. It is a statement about “your Aloha” and spiritual connection to everything Hawaiian and when you step into an area full of sports fans, they instantly know who you are rooting for. Being paid to broadcast an NCAA competition live back to Hawaii, the natural tendency is to favor the Hawaii team. Not necessarily to be a “homer”; that is someone who is unabashedly favoring one team over another, but clearly the spin put on the broadcast is one that has an affinity to the Rainbows.
On the main table used by official scorekeeper and statisticians, Newcomb set aside space not only for me, but for the broadcast equipment I was using. He was keen to put be on the left side of the table as I could sit about one meter to my left from the Hawaii head coach. Journalists were rarely in attendance at NCAA Men’s Volleyball matches and Newcomb did everything possible to accommodate me. He understood the power of radio. He understood that media coverage of this tournament was critically important for a sport that forever languishes at the bottom of any Athletic Director’s agenda and that in Hawaii, this non-televised event meant that radio ruled the roost and that tens of thousands of people would be listening to the match in Honolulu.
Like all Hawaii coaches, Alan Rosehill was very accommodating to a live radio format and allowed me to do my pre-game interview from my seated position. Hawaii coaches also know all their family and friends are intently listening to every single word. Of key importance to all coaches from Hawaii is the jet lag that every athlete faces. With the Hawaiian islands more than 2,500 miles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, all University of Hawaii teams spend a considerable amount of time in flying to the US Mainland for their competition. With the case of this WIVA Volleyball Tournament, the Rainbows arrived in Los Angeles and then were bused south to the Irvine campus the day before competition. Rosehill wanted the fans back home to know that his players were well rested and ready for a fight.
I took this broadcast like a duck to water - utilizing all of the linguistical talents that Bob brought out in me during the previous three months. Radio is a fabulous medium, only if you have the “gift of gab”. I made this my broadcast and created my own call sign. As I would go to each commercial, I said the following, “Throughout the Hawaiian Islands, this is the Rainbow Sports Radio Network”. And that ended up being my call sign for every Hawaii broadcast that came afterward for the next eight years.
The Rainbows lost the match but Iverson liked what he heard and I was hired that week for the entire 1992 Rainbow Men’s and Wahine Volleyball season.
***
Broadcasting sports on radio is all about passion. Passion for athletics and passion for sport and in my case, the passion I had for the sport of Volleyball. And it was that passion … knowledge of the game and the love that I had for this sport that naturally came out. The key with radio is to paint “word pictures” in the minds of all listeners, young or old, that will draw people to each broadcast. I always wanted to bring each Volleyball broadcast alive; to make it a linguistical event …from the colors of the uniforms the players wore to the sheer all out drive that each student athlete brings to their sport. Basically, I wanted to pull every listener through the radio speakers, have them sit down next to me, pop a cold soda and enjoy the event with me. Fortunately, that was what I was able to do. To create and bring to life a linguistic world that would make Volleyball as exciting to the listener as any NCAA football or basketball game.
And I was “in the face” of the listener. You know that when you listened to me broadcast a sport event, I would give it my all. Total and complete focus on every facet of the match. If a player mishandled the ball, I would call it – sometimes so loudly that it many times would convince an umpire who, like anyone within the first three rows of an arena could hear my voice, to make the call. Many times, live on the air, I would challenge the umpire on his call and they would argue with me, many times to the consternation of both home and away coaching staffs. When that happened, I would grab a stick microphone and pointed it at the umpire and made him/her explain their rational for that particular ruling.
***
When the fall semester of 1992 rolled around, I was doing the play-by-play of all of the BYU Women’s matches, both in Provo and when they travelled on the road; as well as all of the mainland competition for the University of Hawaii Wahine. The two radio programs combined had me on the run – one night at San Diego State, the next at UCLA and the immediately on an airplane the next morning to hustle over to the BYU Smith Fieldhouse for an evening broadcast. I loved every minute of it. I had found my life’s calling and I reveled in it. Combining both the men’s and women’s competition of BYU and mainland competition for Hawaii. The money wasn’t great but it paid some bills. The most important thing was that I constantly was honing my skills and getting better each time I put on the headsets.
There was no way any of this would have happened without Bob McGregor’s patience with my frustrations and challenges. Volleyball is not the easiest sport to broadcast. Eventually, I invested several thousands of dollars of my own money in my own Sennheiser headphones, mixer board and other equipment. All of it fit nicely into a large Sideout Sport carrying bag that I took everywhere. Within about 10 minutes, I could be plugged in and ready to go. All I needed was a direct dial telephone and one power cord. Remember … its radio not TV. Radio is the most portable medium there is and I only carried what I needed, plus one backup cable.
***
Just before the start of the 1992 NCAA Women’s Volleyball broadcast season began, probably around July of that year, I got something in my head. That is a dangerous thing to do because once it’s there, it generally never gets away. And this brilliant idea started with a lunch at a local UC Irvine hamburger joint with Bob Newcomb and ended two hours later with my selling corporate sponsorships for the WIVA. This was a big step for me
