Danielson leads the way on left side

What more can Hawaii ask of three-time volleyball All-American Kanani Danielson?

We are about to find out.

The senior out of Kamehameha has led the Rainbow Wahine, and most of the country, in kills the past two years. She is hitting .300-plus in her career, has helped anchor the passing, provided much of the defense and set the left-side block. For her, the rare double-double (kills and digs) is pretty much a gimme.

After being introduced with third-team All-America honors her freshman year, she has risen to first team the past two and leaped into national player of the year conversations.

“After the first year nothing surprised me,” said UH coach Dave Shoji, whose season opens Aug. 26. “I was very surprised at how advanced she was that first year. After that, anything she does really doesn’t faze me anymore.

“If you are an outside hitter, you should be watching her. You should be paying to watch her. In all phases of the game she’s just exceptional — passer, defender, attacker and blocker. It’s hard to have all those skills wrapped up in one person.”

Shoji is blunt about what his team needs from Danielson in her final year: “She has to play at a high level all the time.”

Danielson anticipated that massive challenge and is clearly up for it, in part because she created such ridiculous expectations.

“If she’s not at that level all the time, the team drops off,” Shoji says. “It’s difficult to do because she has to do so many things for us — get kills, passing, be active on defense.”

There is still more than enough for the rest of the Wahine to do. Who will do it at the other left-side position is very much up in the air — much like Danielson.

Sophomore Michelle Waber is the incumbent and has a year of collegiate experience on everyone else at the position. But Emily Hartong and freshman Jane Croson bring the most “pop.” Ginger Long, who had more than 1,000 kills while taking Kamehameha-Maui to four Maui Interscholastic League titles, “has the longest way to go,” said Shoji, who recruited her for her “spirit and athleticism.”

The dynamic and versatile Hartong is ahead for now, but also taking reps on the right and middle, where she started last season and earned Western Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year. Her numbers were not high, but she gets so high, hits the ball so hard and is so relentless the coaches wanted to look at her for both outside positions.

“As a middle she is undersized so we lose a little blocking,” Shoji said. “She’s just learning how to play middle-back (on defense) and just learning how to pass so she’s not as good as she could be. She has to learn and be patient. She’s just a sponge. She wants to learn and get better. She wants to play.”

For now, Shoji calls Waber and Croson “really not a bad Plan B or Plan C” if Hartong is on the move. Waber is the tallest, but still the weakest despite major gains in strength training. She averaged 2-plus kills last season as a starter and worked her okole off, but hit just .193 and touched many more balls than she blocked. It was not a huge surprise with her inexperience.

Croson is even more inexperienced in college, but has played — and succeeded — at the highest levels of club and international junior events. She has earned a string of MVP awards and, with Summer Ross, was part of the first U.S. team to win a Youth Beach World Championship (2010). She is strong, imposing, and making strides daily as she adjusts to the quickness of the college game.

“She’s played better the last few days,” Shoji said. “It’s understanding what’s in front of her. She definitely has some pop on the ball. If she gets it by the block it’s a lot like (former Wahine) Aneli (Cubi-Otineru) — it’s usually not coming back. But she’s young and still learning. She has just overpowered everybody to this point. She’s not going to be able to do that here against good teams.”

Hawaii has to have more passing from the position than it got a year ago. Waber and Hartong worked long and hard on the skill through the spring and summer. Croson is a better-than-average passer on the beach, but the precision of the indoor game — and the movement it takes to execute — is much harder to master. Long, too, is making major adjustments.

In their favor is the fact that Danielson is one of the purest passers on the planet. She gives the Wahine a bit of an unorthodox look, serving as a terminating attacker and ball-control defender, along with everything else.

“Typically, your smaller ball-control player is your second left,” Shoji says. “In our case, the second left is going to be bigger, with less ball control, which is pretty unusual these days.”

But then, so is Danielson.