Ferd Lewis: Hawaii water polo coach Maureen Cole enjoying success in place she calls home

The last — and one of the only — times that Maureen “Mo” Flanagan Cole spent more than a couple of months away from either playing or coaching water polo she was desk-bound in an escrow office.

Having just graduated from UCLA with a business degree and been a final cut of the 2004 U.S. Olympic women’s water polo team, she returned home to Honolulu, saying “I think I needed a break at that point in time, just a mental break to miss it enough to know that I still loved it. If that makes any sense.”

It did to her heart, which told her that, after six months in the office, it was time to get back to the pool.

That yearning, which resulted in the start of a 15-year stay (10 as head coach) with University of Hawaii water polo, “is what I am definitely feeling again right now,” Cole said.

Today marks six months to the day since COVID-19 signalled an abrupt end to what had the makings of the best season in the sport’s history at UH and she longs to get back to reassembling the pieces for 2021.

For the moment, with hopes for a January start to the season up in the air, guidelines only permit the players to train on their own away from campus in what she describes as “the only thing that isn’t closed right now, the ocean,” and limits her contact with them to Zoom sessions.

When the plug was pulled on the 2020 season, the Rainbow Wahine were off to the best start in their 23 years at 11-2, and ranked fourth nationally in the Collegiate Water Polo Coaches poll, having lost to just No. 2-ranked Stanford and No. 3 UCLA.

A fourth trip to the NCAA national championships in eight years looked to be on the horizon and the Rainbow Wahine had the perfect launching pad, with the Big West Championship Tournament booked for the first time at Duke Kahanamoku Pool.

All that was swept away by the pandemic, including the prospect of hosting the 2021 conference tournament, which is scheduled for the home pool of the highest-seeded Big West member in southern California due to league finance and travel concerns.

But what remains from 2020 is considerable, including five of seven starters, three of them (Alba Bonamusa Boix, Carmen Baringo and Bridget Layburn) returning All-Americans.

The sustained success of the program is reflected in UH making the airing of water polo matches part of the requirement for its new five-year rights deal with Spectrum and in a multi-year contract extension for Cole that will run through 2023. UH said the extension was already agreed to prior to the onset of the pandemic.

“Mo has done an outstanding job representing UH,” athletic director David Matlin said. “Her student-athletes are consistently high achievers academically and athletically and she continues to keep our water polo program in the national championship picture year in and year out. We look forward to watching Coach Mo continue to develop champions in and out of the pool.”

Cole, a Punahou School graduate, said, “This is home for me. There’s no other place I’d rather be, so Pac-12 and Big Ten coaching jobs don’t really appeal to me. I want to be here and it kinda just organically happened.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.