Last week’s 25th Amer Ari Intercollegiate was a showcase for University of Hawaii Hilo golf and the Vulcans’ entire athletic program.
It featured four Top-15 squads. Matt Kuchar played a practice round with his old Georgia Tech team. Ninth-ranked USC won the title, torching Waikoloa Kings’ to the tune of 29 under. Top-ranked Auburn could only manage 10th.
That was six shots ahead of Hawaii, 15 better than Osaka Gakuin and 22 lower than Hilo, which tied for 16th in the 19-team event.
That offers a fair barometer of where many NCAA Division II programs stand. They might not be stacked with the country’s elite players, but D-II golfers have got game and always find a challenge.
Ask Nick Mason, who blossomed in the Hilo rain to become one of Hawaii’s best golfers. Or Sam Cyr, who went from Maui to win a couple NAIA national championships before heading to the Asia Tour.
Taking a little lower aim at college golf — scoring averages in the high 70s and low 80s — makes sense for most golfers, who get four of their best years to improve. In Hawaii, UH Hilo and Hawaii Pacific field men’s and women’s teams and Chaminade and Brigham Young-Hawaii have men only.
All are looking for good golfers, from Hawaii and anywhere else.
“Division I has only the top-notch kids,” says UHH men’s coach Earl Tamiya. “The rest should go D-II.”
“It’s especially good for the girls,” adds Jim DeMello, the Vulcans’ women’s coach, “because there are more schools than players so the opportunity for a scholarship is good. The average high school golfer can get a scholarship because of the numbers.”
Hilo’s history and penchant for putting on big-time events has it leading Hawaii’s D-II pack. Two years ago, the Vulcan women won their first PacWest championship and the men captured their third in six years.
There is more parity at home now. This month the Seasider men won a Tri-Match — behind medalist Jacob Godfrey — with the two other Hawaii programs. They beat Chaminade by a stroke and HPU by 16.
We get recognition and publicity. Every major school wants to come. Results go all over so Waikoloa gets publicity too and it puts UHHilo on the map.”
– Earl Tamiya Hawaii Hilo men’s golf coach
The PacWest Championships are the end of April. Until then, the Hawaii teams can work on improving from last year, when the highlight was Top-35 West Regional finishes by Hilo’s Dalen Yamauchi and Seasider Nicolas Herrera.
Herrera is one of two Columbians on the BYUH roster. Leilehua alum Nickolas Rivera’s teammates at HPU are from Thailand, Japan and the West Coast.
Chaminade has five players from Oahu and is coached by former Rainbow Wahine assistant Renee Yuen, who also helped start the HPU women’s program three years ago. She signed Kaiser senior Jeren Nishimoto for next year.
Hilo has no one from Oahu. Tamiya’s roster includes seniors Ric Yamamoto and David Tottori Jr. from Hilo, and Kyeton Littel from Maui.
The Sea Warrior women are all from the mainland, with the exception of Finland’s Susanna Sarkk, who chose HPU because of its MBA program and “Hawaii is every golfer’s favorite destination.” All but one of the women on Hilo’s roster is from Hawaii, with 2014 PacWest champion Kristen Sawada the only senior.
With no money to recruit, D-II schools usually get referrals and keep a close eye on prospects who show an interest on websites and via email.
When the players get here, the goal is to make them better and get them a degree — quickly if you go to BYU-Hawaii.
“Since athletics will be closing down in 2017, one of our goals is to have my team be very competitive and be in the running for the PacWest Championship,” says coach Bob Owan, who also is Director of Materials Management for BYUH. “The second goal is to make sure that the athletes in their junior and senior years all have the opportunity to finish their studies and get their degrees in the next one or two years.
“I also want to make sure players who are in their freshmen and sophomore year have adequate GPA averages in order for them to transfer to another college after the 2017 season.”
Coach Jim Utsugi, whose fulltime job is in sales management, calls his work a delicate “balance” at HPU. “Both our programs strive to get better each day,” he says, “in the classroom, on the course through our performance and off the course being good people in our communities.”
And, if a perfect storm hits, someone like Nick Mason is runner-up in the NCAA D-II nationals, helping his team to a fourth-place finish, which happened to Hilo in 2005.
Now, every major golf program wants to play in the Vulcans’ feature tournament — named after a donor whose son used to play for Hilo. The Vulcans started their tournament at the request of the North Carolina coach 25 years ago. He promised to provide the teams if Hilo got the facilities.
“We get recognition and publicity,” Tamiya says. “Every major school wants to come. Results go all over so Waikoloa gets publicity too and it puts UH Hilo on the map..”
