The University of Hawaii had a pretty good haul at the American Volleyball Coaches Association Sand Volleyball Championships over the weekend, and the Rainbow Wahine’s head coach didn’t do badly, either.
Amid the second-place finish in the pairs, a third place for the team and four players chosen to the All-America squad, Scott Wong definitely had something to write home about from Gulf Shores, Ala.
On his resume, especially.
Wong’s "other" job at UH, after all, is as the associate coach to Dave Shoji on the Rainbow Wahine TeraFlex team. The same Shoji who will shortly head into a milestone 40th — and probably last — season as head coach.
At some point, Shoji, who hits age 68 and, perhaps, 1,150 victories in December, will leave UH with the unenviable task of seeking a successor for the school’s most accomplished coach.
The key word here being "successor" and not "replacement" because in this day and age of the big-money divide in athletics, thinking you are going to replace somebody with four national championships at a non-Bowl Championship Series-level institution is a pipe dream.
When the time comes, UH will undoubtedly commence a national search with all the accompanying bells and whistles. The candidates figure to be numerous. But if you believe in the line-of-succession theory, there is no doubt where that would point: right at the 35-year-old Wong.
The former Pepperdine All-American and former U.S. National Team player will be starting his fifth year as a full-time assistant at UH in the No. 2 spot, a position he was hand-picked for by Shoji in 2010 when Mike Sealy took the head-coaching job at UCLA.
It would not be the first time Shoji has entrusted Wong with the safe keeping of something, or someone, precious to him, of course. Back at Punahou, where Wong graduated with Shoji’s daughter, Cobey, we are told he babysat Shoji’s sons, Kawika and Erik.
And Shoji selected Wong over some other candidates who reportedly had head-coaching experience and sought to get a foot in the door at UH for the future. Wong, meanwhile, had spent one year at UH as a volunteer assistant before returning to his alma mater, Pepperdine, for four years and San Francisco for one.
But, then, as now, Wong was seen as a young, up-and-coming coach. That’s why, along the way, Shoji had strongly endorsed him for the UH men’s job that went to another former assistant, Charlie Wade.
And if Shoji doesn’t get to directly pick his successor this time, be assured he will at least have a compelling voice in the proceedings.
Which is why there has been no time like the present for Wong to show what he could do with his only head-coaching opportunity to date, running the three-year-old sand volleyball program. It is a program that looks to have a pretty good future.
Probably not unlike the man who coaches them.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820
