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Hawaii has delivered all season for sand volleyball coach Scott Wong. The Rainbow Wahine are No. 3 nationally and take a 15-3 record into this week’s tournament in Huntington Beach, Calif., to end the regular season.
But it doesn’t beat Tuesday night’s delivery for Wong. His wife, Tamar, gave birth to son Dylan, the couple’s second child; they also have a daughter.
That the baby was born three weeks ahead of schedule just added to the hectic week for Wong. After flying back from California on Monday following a successful showing at the USAV Beach Collegiate Challenge, questions arose about the Big West Challenge, scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Huntington Beach.
This week’s event had been set up last October with dual matches between Hawaii, Long Beach State, Cal Poly and Irvine College on Friday and a pairs bracket tournament Saturday. Invitations also had been extended to several schools without formal sand volleyball programs to participate and see what the emerging sport was all about.
No other schools were interested and, as Wong found out, the interest from Cal Poly and Long Beach State had also waned. The Mustangs committed to play at USC’s Pac-12 Invitational duals event in Santa Monica on Saturday, and the 49ers, who remain at No. 5 in Wednesday’s poll, pulled out of Saturday’s play as well.
Wong said he called Long Beach State officials and told them that Hawaii would not fly back if it was a one-day tournament on Friday.
"We got it resolved," Wong said.
The dual matches Friday stand as scheduled, with the one between the SandBows (15-3) and the defending national champion 49ers (7-4) having potential national playoff implications. Top-ranked USC (17-1) and No. 2 Pepperdine (13-1) have all but sewn up the two automatic berths from the West region in the AVCA Collegiate Sand Championships, May 2-4, at Gulf Shores, Ala.
Potentially at stake Friday is the West’s at-large spot.
"I feel good about our team. I think we’re playing well," Wong said. "We’re still third nationally, have had a lot of great matches, but we’ll need to prove ourselves again this week."
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