Charlie Wade wrote me back.
Did I mention here that I wrote a mushy email to Hawaii Warriors coach Charlie Wade after the Stanford double-shot two weeks ago? Well, if I didn’t mention it before, I have now. I know I wrote here about how dearly I enjoyed those matches and was fast becoming a fan of the Hawaii team. I wanted to reach out to them and offer my congratulations as personally as possible. Honestly I’d have offered similar congratulations to the Stanford team (they were on the court, too, after all), but there’s no publicly available contact information for anyone associated with their coaching staff or team that I could find on the team website.
I’ll just reprint my email verbatim:
Hi Coach. You don’t know me, but that’s what happens when your email account is publicly available 😉
I blog about the amazing sport of volleyball — https://thenetset.wordpress.com — and thanks to Hawaii’s high-quality, freely-available webcasts I’ve had the chance to see most of your team’s matches this season. Right away I found your team likeable, but they seemed a bit like the Chicago Cubs (I also follow baseball) sorry to say — loveable losers. I figured the non-league win over UCLA was probably going to be one of the teams’ high points of the year.
Well, way to freaking prove me wrong. The Pepperdine double-shot was great stuff. I just wish I’d have known about the earlier start time for the second match — I nearly missed it all. But this Stanford series. Wow. Just, wow. I went to a Division II school myself, so my college sports rooting preferences have had to happen the old-fashioned way. I think your Warriors (and Stanford, but especially you guys, being the underdogs going against the #3 team in the nation) gained a new fan this weekend.
Friday night’s match was one of the most competitive matches I’ve ever seen. I thought that third set would never end! Just seeing how tired everyone looked toward the end of the match gave me a real appreciation for the effort and determination and dedication and energy expended by all of them. I was disappointed that the least competitive point of the match was the very end of it, though surely not nearly so much as you lot.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I very nearly decided to just go to bed and not watch tonight’s webcast. Whatever my reason for staying up, I’m so incredibly glad I did. Everyone in America is surely all geared up for that football game in a few hours’ time, but as far as I’m concerned Stanford vs. Hawaii was the sporting event of the weekend. In occasionally-cynical times, it truly did remind me why I’m a fan of volleyball, and a fan of sports in general. Those guys played with hunger, with passion, with heart, with determination. It was thrilling. It made my heart soar. It brought me to tears. It made me laugh, but it was the laughter of pure joy. You might think I’m laying it on a little thick, but I promise you I mean every word I’m writing.
There are always those moments where we heap praise upon your sporting heroes. But tonight, after the last ball fell, my first reaction was a little different. It wasn’t “You guys’re amazing” (though your team deserve a lot of praise and superlatives, to be sure). It was “thank you.” Thank you for giving so much, for everything you do. How often do we feel the need to thank our sporting heroes? It’s not often. I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve ever felt the way I did after this match, and last night’s, and it is truly one of the best feelings in the world. If anyone ever questions why I’m a sports fan…it’s nights like this that are the answer. This is why sports are worth it.
I don’t know, I almost can’t explain it. It’s really only know, a good couple of hours after the match ended, that I’m catching my breath. What I saw tonight from those young men, on both sides of the net, made me so proud of all of them. This fiercely beautiful passion and love of the game that was on display the last two nights is when I know sports will always be worth it. Millionaires may bicker with billionaires. Men and women who would be heroes may toy with our emotions and our own love of sports for their own selfish, personal gain by taking shortcuts. But that will never be the whole story. There will always be people who fight, who do it the right way, setting hearts ablaze as they go.
Probably my favorite player on the team is Brook Sedore (yay, Canada!). I love his serving strength and it sure seems like his inclusion in the starting lineup has been the catalyst for the team’s turnaround over the last few weeks. Stylin’ haircut, too 😉 Supersub Johann Timmer is the definition of clutch (and oh by the way, way to go starting him in the 5th tonight to get him two opportunities at the service line…even though the second didn’t really amount to much), you always know something exciting’s on the verge of happening when he comes in. JP Marks is an impressive workhorse, the backbone of the starting lineup. I must admit Siki Zarkovic seems a little full of himself at times, but hey, if I was as young and successful as him, I might be too. It’s been interesting to see Joby Ramos’ fearless front-line as such an undersized setter, and I truly do think Matthew Cheape deserves consideration for All-American honors at libero. Will Davis Holt ever get the #18 that’s next to his name on the website? Must say he’s been doing okay with 24 lately!
I’m happy I was wrong about yours being a team that didn’t have many wins in them. You already knew this, but it’s a talented group you’ve got, and they are a joy to watch. So once more, thank you.
I would be gratified if you could convey some measure of congratulations to your team. You can leave out the schmaltz 😉 But since I can’t do it myself, I’m going to the next most proximate line of contact. Watching your team play even makes me forget a few of my own troubles for a little while, and man, that’s priceless.
Take care,
– Aly
Yeah, maybe I should have waited 24 hours so it wouldn’t be quite so soppingly mushy : But then again, maybe not, because this really does reflect how I felt about the team and those two incredible matches. I’ve already written thousands of words about them (literally), so I need not write more.
During the women’s season I similarly sent an email to Wichita State Shockers coach Chris Lamb, whose team I also very much came to enjoy. Coach Lamb never wrote me back. Hey, fair play — his team had made it further than any in school history, and I’m sure he got hundreds of emails from people, and probably that many from people he knew personally. Doesn’t upset me at all that I never heard back from him.
But Coach Wade did take the time to write me back, and I have to say I’m really touched by the gesture. I don’t want to reprint his email verbatim without his consent, but he basically just told me thanks for the support, and I passed your message along to the people you named (“yes, even Siki”) and they were all happy and proud to have had me share in the journey.
You know, I’m doing my very best to keep my feet grounded. These are a bunch of normal young men that I’m probably never gonna meet, who will never go on to be world-famous or anything (almost no one in volleyball does). But god, this has just put a huge smile in my face today. It makes me really happy to have a measure of direct interaction with them (and hey fellas, if you’re reading, give me a shout on facebook or twitter, I’d love to connect there), after those outstanding matches…I tell you what, Hawaii Warriors volleyball has got a fan for life on the mainland. And I was becoming pretty fond of the Wahine as the women’s season wore on, too. I went to a Division II school myself (as I’ve written about here), so I’ve never really had strong Division I rooting preferences, but Hawaii have pretty much got me now.
So mahalo, boys, and I’m with you to the end.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
