FIRST OF 3 PARTS
Hanging out before school one morning, Pi‘ikea Kitamura decided to call Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso with some good news.
"I was getting ready to go to class (at Kamehameha) and I called him and committed," Kitamura recalled. "He laughed and said, ‘If it wasn’t 8 in the morning, I’d pop a beer right now.’"
Trapasso knew right away securing a commitment from the two-time All-Interscholastic League of Honolulu infielder was worth celebrating.
One conversation was all it took for the coach to see the potential.
"From Day 1, all you had to do was meet Pi‘ikea," Trapasso said. "The very first time I sat down and talked with him you could see that character, you could see that toughness, you could see that desire to succeed."
All of that was tested after Kitamura’s sophomore year.
Despite the team winning a Western Athletic Conference tournament title and a regular-season title in his first two years, Kitamura wasn’t happy.
The Rainbows failed to earn a repeat bid to the NCAA tournament in 2011 and only a run of nine hits in his final 16 at-bats kept him from finishing the season hitting below .200.
When the team’s season ended in the WAC tournament in Mesa, Ariz., he decided to take the summer off and return home, where he rediscovered himself as a baseball player.
"That was probably the most failure I’d ever experienced on a baseball field," Kitamura said. "I stepped away from it, cleared my head, cleared my thoughts, and tried to take all the thinking out of it."
Knowing he’d move to shortstop for his junior year, he also dropped 20 pounds, dedicating himself to both conditioning and the weight room.
As a result, he became a fixture last season as the team’s No. 3 hitter and was one of only two ‘Bows to finish the year hitting over .300, raising his average 103 points to a career-best .311.
While UH’s offense sputtered down the stretch, Kitamura did all he could to keep UH afloat. He ended the season on a nine-game hitting streak in which he reached base 16 times in 40 plate appearances.
"He’s been a special player," Trapasso said. "He’s reached a point where he’s not just our leader from an inspirational and motivational standpoint, but he leads by example because nobody outworks him, and when you put in that kind of work ethic and you’re performing like he has, the leadership really carries value."
One of two players remaining from the 2010 team that went to the NCAA regional final in Tempe, Ariz., Kitamura is drawing upon those experiences to educate the new group of Rainbows.
"The stories I can tell about guys like Kolten (Wong), Greg (Garcia) and Sam (Spangler) to these young guys I think really helps," Kitamura said.
And like Wong, Garcia and Spangler before him, Kitamura’s story will one day serve to inspire a future group of Rainbows.
If it doesn’t already.
