The NCAA News - News & Features

FAN-TASTIC! Hawaii women's volleyball draws a crowd

BY GARY T. BROWN
Staff Writer

If big crowds are the 12th man in football, then the throngs at University of Hawaii, Manoa, volleyball matches should be the seventh woman.

A perennial leader in volleyball attendance, Hawaii's 1996 edition of women's volleyball is rewarding Rainbow Wahine fans with a top-ranked, unbeaten team seeking its fourth NCAA title.

Capacity crowds regularly fill Hawaii's Special Events Arena to watch the Rainbows serve, dig and volley their way to another win. Since the arena was built in 1994, Hawaii has led the nation in attendance by far -- more than 145,000 fans clicked the turnstiles in 1995 and even bigger numbers are expected this year.

Hawaii's average crowd in 1994 was more than 7,400 fans, only 1,000 fewer than for men's basketball. In 1995, the volleyball team attracted more than 6,000 per game, again ranking behind only men's basketball and the school's top draw that year -- men's volleyball.

Nationally, Hawaii's volleyball crowds are unprecedented. The Rainbow Wahines have drawn the 13 largest crowds so far in 1996, topped by a gathering of 9,080 that saw Hawaii down San Diego State University in early October. Even their 13th largest crowd of 6,806 is some 1,700 fans more than the 14th largest crowd of the year, which was recorded at the University of New Mexico.

How does it happen? Hours of tireless promoting and marketing? Tedious time spent convincing fans to buy tickets? Not quite.

'Great fans'

"The most obvious thing is that we have great fans," said head coach Dave Shoji. "We have great interest in the team and people come out to the games. There's no other way to explain it -- they're just the best fans in the country."

As simple as that sounds, however, the huge following didn't just create itself. Several factors have contributed to the Rainbow bandwagon.

First of all, the fans on the islands are used to watching a winner. Hawaii has never posted a losing record since the program's inception in 1974. Shoji came on board in 1975 and took just four years to build a championship team as the 1979 squad captured the AIAW crown. Since 1981, when the NCAA began sponsoring women's volleyball championships, Shoji's squads have compiled a 439-84 slate and appeared in 14 of 15 NCAA tournaments, winning titles in 1982, 1983 and 1987.

Second, there are no local professional sports to lure fans away. The Rainbows are the top game in town and the fans are loyal.

'Only game in town'

"We're unique in that we're the only game in town, so there's a lot of local players able to participate at the Division I level, and we're able to attract and retain those players," said Scott Harada, Hawaii's director of marketing. "So when we do have a team that becomes a winner, there's a following that goes along with that."

"There are limited events to see here, and because volleyball is exciting and successful, the fans have turned to that," said assistant athletics director Marilyn Moniz-Kaho'ohanohano, who also is the school's senior woman administrator. "If football was successful at this time the fans would fill that stadium also. But there's been a strong interest in volleyball in Hawaii for many years, and a lot of the fans are very well acquainted with the game and how it's played."

Shoji also attributes the attendance more to the game itself.

"The University of Hawaii is pretty much the only game in town," he said, "but that's the situation in a lot of places. Once people figure out that volleyball is a very exciting sport to watch...if you look at attendance figures all over the country, they're growing and growing, and people are figuring out that the game is exciting to watch. Aesthetically, people just like it.

"It's a beautiful game to watch and once people are exposed to it, they will pay to come out and watch volleyball."

Shoji, who is among national leaders in career coaching victories with more than 600, is blessed -- due largely to the fan following -- with being part of a revenue-producing sport, which is not the case with most of his peers around the rest of the country.

According to Moniz-Kaho'ohanohano, Hawaii's women's volleyball program brought in more than $500,000 last year and is projected to earn between $800,000 and $1 million this season.

Arena makes difference

Those types of figures became reality with the completion of the Special Events Arena. Before that, Hawaii's athletics teams either played in tiny Klum Gym with 1,800 seats or took their games to the city's facility downtown.

"We needed an on-campus arena for the school and for the conference," Shoji said. "That was the impetus (for the building). But I don't think anyone could have imagined we'd be averaging over 7,000 people. There was some talk initially about maybe a 4,000-seat arena and I was thinking that would be perfect for us, but obviously I didn't see the bigger picture -- I didn't have any idea we could do that (average that many fans)."

And according to Harada and Moniz-Kaho'ohanohano, keeping the stands full isn't a high-maintenance task.

Harada said there was an initial push for season-ticket sales, but the success of the team sold itself once the season began. All the Rainbows' matches are televised statewide and it is natural for fans watching at home to want to be part of the action they see at the arena.

But there still are promotions, including one this year that has grabbed people's attention. In an effort to break the NCAA season attendance record, which the Rainbow Wahines set last year, Hawaii is organizing a "Lucky Fan" night, during which one person will be selected from the stands to attempt to serve a volleyball through a ball-sized target to win $145,007 (a figure equating to the number of fans required to break the attendance record). Needless to say, the promotion has been an ace in the hole so far.

'Sport sells itself'

"The sport sells itself," Harada said. "We'd like to take credit for it -- and we do supplement the success -- but the reality is that the tradition of excellence that the coaching staff has maintained, along with the commitment from the administration to build a first-class facility and the support of business leaders such as Bank of Hawaii who have made substantial commitments to the university, are the primary reasons for success."

And as for winning as a factor? Well, Hawaii has not gone through a prolonged period of losing to test fans' patience, though Shoji said with five seniors on his roster this year, the pot at the end of the 1997 season might not be filled with gold.

"It'll be interesting to see," he said. "We're probably not going to be ranked No. 1 next year, but we'll still probably lead the nation in attendance."