Awards snub has UH fired up for tourney

You don’t play for the accolades. You play for the love of the game.

With that being said, first-year Hawaii soccer coach Michele Nagamine was livid when the Western Athletic Conference postseason awards were announced Wednesday as a lead-in to today’s WAC tournament in Fresno, Calif.

Senior defender Brittani Lum and junior forward Skye Shimabukuro received All-WAC second-team honors. That was the extent of the awards for third-place UH (5-11-1, 4-2-1 WAC). The first team was dominated by regular-season champion Utah State and runner-up Fresno State; they received nine of the 11 placements, and USU swept the four singular honors (offensive and defensive players of the year, freshman of the year and coach of the year).

UH beat both USU and FSU in the regular season.

"I think to finish third in the conference and to get two people on the second team, I think it’s a travesty and I think it’s a bunch of crap," Nagamine said in a phone interview. "The kids worked harder than that and I felt there were some very deserving ones."

The league’s eight coaches voted on the selections. Nagamine said she hoped her players would use it as fire in today’s (11:30 Hawaii time) first-round matchup against sixth-seeded New Mexico State. In particular, Nagamine felt Lum deserved a first-team spot after she led the Rainbow Wahine in goals (five) as a defender. That was tied for seventh among WAC players.

"It’s really good," Lum said of her honor. "I mean, I think more of our team should have been recognized. But I guess we can’t help that."

Shimabukuro, of Kauai, was second on the team with three goals. Two of those were game-winners in WAC play. Several other players didn’t excel statistically but kept UH in contention for a regular-season championship until the last week.

"We worked hard all season and I think we deserved (more), but they just didn’t give it to us," Lum said. "If anything, we’re just going to have to go out there, show them what we got and win the whole thing."

First UH needs a better showing against NMSU (9-7-3, 2-3-2), which beat UH 1-0 in Las Cruces, N.M., last Friday to end its championship hopes.

"I think they’re going to be pretty fired up," Nagamine said. "We were fired up as it was, but I think this was a big slap in the face to a team that finished third. And yeah, maybe we haven’t been around (at the WAC tournament) for a little bit (two years), so maybe people didn’t get a chance to get to know our players. But as a coach, you’ve gotta pay attention."

This is UH’s last season in the WAC before leaving for the Big West Conference in soccer. Today’s game will be live streamed at www.wacsports.com.