The University of Hawaii’s online advertisement for a successor to Dave Shoji ran a lengthy 26 paragraphs Monday.
Nowhere in there, tucked among the qualities desired or responsibilities and duties of the next Rainbow Wahine volleyball coach, however, do you find the word “legend.”
Perhaps that is because the opening up of position No. 0081552 comes with the realization that there is not another one like him to be found out there.
Somebody may fit most of the specs, but filling the considerable shoes is a whole other thing.
No matter how wide a net UH casts in this promised “nationwide search” you do not replace what this man has meant to UH, volleyball or the state. UH could scour inter-galactic-ally and not find that person.
Somebody will eventually be hired to succeed him, of course, but she or he will not be a replacement.
They will be the inheritor of something painstakingly built from the dusty, creaky floors of the Klum Gym on up, the trustee of one of UH’s most prized heirlooms.
In fact, when UH brings in the candidates for interviews it owes them a tour around and through the relic that is Klum to best appreciate the Stan Sheriff Center the Rainbow Wahine now call home, the four national championship banners that hang in the rafters and the faithful following that packs the seats.
What Shoji undertook in 1975, almost as a consolation prize for the Punahou School opening that paid more, was a part-time job with questionable future prospects and a bare-bones budget. He also served as an academic adviser, the only way UH could afford to pay him even the $18,000 combined salary.
Two other coaches — one an interim — had held the coaching job and lasted less than a year. Shoji, who came to share the remarkable vision of then-women’s athletic director Donnis Thompson, took the program and its fans to unimagined heights.
He has 42 seasons in the books and, at age 70, would be a good bet for a 43rd, if not for the prostate cancer he is battling, a situation he revealed in December.
The announcement of the anticipated position opening was made Monday, contingent upon Shoji’s desire to step down. Friends, in recent days, have said they do not expect him to return in the fall.
It has long been a sign of Shoji’s standing that he was granted the longest contract — six years and seven months — of any coach in the school’s history a while back. But, as a succession of athletic directors have put it, the paperwork was always a formality since they had pledged Shoji would have the job as long as he wanted it.
At UH, successful football, basketball and baseball teams and their celebrated eras have come and gone over the decades, but the one constant has been Rainbow Wahine volleyball. Other programs might go winless or be the target of NCAA investigations, but one thing UH fans could always hang a hat on was that Shoji’s teams would win. And they won plenty — 1,202 matches — in Shoji’s tenure, second most in NCAA history.
Never did they suffer a losing season. The only down-and-out season, by their standards at least, was 1992, when the Rainbow Wahine still managed to go 15-12 (11-7 in league) but were not invited to the postseason.
Feb. 13 is the projected closing date for applications. Then comes the hard part.
The only thing tougher than beating Shoji regularly, it will likely turn out, is finding someone who can carry on the considerable legacy.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
