Rise of the Wahine

Twenty colleges that rejected Patsy T. Mink after she graduated from Maui High in 1944 fed a tsunami that still washes over the country 70 years later. Dean Kaneshiro and Ryan Tsuji hope to articulate the impact Mink and Hawaii played in gender equality with "Rise of the Wahine," a documentary scheduled to be released this summer.

Kaneshiro is director/producer. Tsuji, a former TV reporter, is helping. He was Rainbow Wahine volleyball coach Dave Shoji’s graduate/volunteer assistant for nearly eight years and is currently communications director for Sen. David Ige and a broadcaster for OC Sports.

Tiffany Taylor is also a producer and hopes to distribute the film nationally. The group is talking with "Walking Dead" actress — and Punahou graduate — Sarah Wayne Callies to do narration and possibly be part of a feature film.

"So many people know Wahine volleyball and are part of it, but they don’t know how it started," according to Tsuji. "The whole story of Donnis (Thompson) having this vision of a sellout at Blaisdell, bringing UCLA in and people thought she was crazy. Sell tickets to a women’s sporting event? At the Blaisdell? That was unheard of, even on a national scale."

Thompson, an African-American woman from Chicago, was hired as the part-time UH women’s athletic director in 1972 after requesting $19,000 from the school the previous year to start a women’s program. She had returned to Hawaii a few years earlier with a doctorate, intending to climb to full professorship. Thompson, who died here five years ago, first came to UH in 1961 to start a track and field program and teach.

About the same time, Mink was co-authoring Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendment — renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act after her death in 2002. The legislation banned sex discrimination at colleges receiving federal aid. Mink had risen above that discrimination, becoming the first woman of color to serve in the U.S. Congress after being rejected from some 20 law and medical schools, because of her gender, she believed.

Thompson, Mink and then-legislators Pat Saiki and Faith Evans were among the core group supporting the women’s athletic program at UH, which captured its first national championship when Wahine volleyball won in 1979 — Shoji’s fifth year as coach. With gender equity progress in athletics now in reverse and generations of women unfamiliar with Title IX, "Rise of the Wahine" hopes to remind people of the injustices of the past and Hawaii’s inordinately large part in early progress.

"I want to be part of it even if it only reaches a few people," says Tsuji, who has also co-founded the non-profit Rizen Foundation. "It needs to be told … with my ties I felt I could help. …The more we find out, the story continues to build and gain more traction. You can’t write this kind of stuff.

"We are primarily targeting the UH fan base, but more than that it’s also for future generations. I feel like if people don’t know about this story it’s going to die. People won’t recognize the significance."

The significance has been most vividly displayed here by volleyball. Shoji has more wins than anyone in the game, and four national championships. Hawaii led the country in attendance from 1994 to 2012 and until Nebraska moved into a larger arena this season, UH was the only collegiate volleyball program making a profit.

It might never have happened without Mink, Thompson — "It had to be done" — and a few others who believed women’s sports was important.

"In a lot of ways," Tsuji said, "Wahine volleyball at the beginning became a catalyst of what women’s sports could be. We talked to certain people, and when other teams found out Donnis sold out the Blaisdell (in 1976), they wanted to hear how she did it because that had never been done. What Pat Summit and all those others did in basketball really started here. A lot of people don’t realize the deep roots Title IX has, specifically for women’s athletics, to Hawaii. So we had to do it here. We had to tell that part of the story."

Tsuji is the son of State Rep. Clift Tsuji. Ryan has recently been denying "rumors" he will run for office. He might not have time. His documentary group is close to the end of filming but still trying to nail down information on Thompson. It is also trying to raise $50,000 to fund the film. Contact information for donations is available at riseofthewahine.com.