SILENCE can be jarring.

In seasons past, the walk from the lower campus parking structure over to the University of Hawaii’s athletic facilities hummed with energy on a game night.

There was a seeming current in the flow of fans funneling through the third-level bridge before diffusing toward the ticket windows or entrance gates fronting the Stan Sheriff Center.

Once inside, the aroma of garlic fries greeted entrants on their way to a concession stand or through one of the tunnels leading to the walkway ringing the court where the Rainbow Wahine or Warriors would be warming up along with their opponents on the other end.

Those nights felt far distant over the truncated 2020-21 sports year upon the return of UH sports from the COVID-19 shutdown.

Sure, the lack of traffic into the campus made for a breezy commute. But even that was a reminder of the eerie atmosphere awaiting in and around the arena.

The lights of the rainbow sculpture at the makai end of the once festive concourse only accentuated the melancholy in the absence of fans.

The Rainbow Warrior volleyball team’s five-set comeback against BYU before a sellout crowd on March 6, 2020, stands as the UH athletic department’s last fully attended event and remains a tantalizing image of what might have been had the pandemic not shut down the 2020 season and shut out fans for the 2021 march to the national championship.

The frenzy most likely would have matched or even exceeded that of the mid-90s teams of Yuval Katz, Aaron Wilton, Sivan Leoni and company. The roars for those rock star/boy band teams during a match were rivaled by the shrieks when one of the players emerged from the security gate after a win (or even a rare loss).

The 2020-21 teams headlined by Rado Parapunov, Patrick Gasman, Colton Cowell and Gage Worsley featured a similar confluence of talent and charisma and likely would have drawn much the same reaction in non-COVID times.

Without fans, the Warriors, as well as the basketball teams earlier in the year, generated their own energy on the court and from the bench with cardboard cutouts and artificial crowd noise — a well-intentioned but lacking substitute for 7,000-plus voices.

August is a time of abundant hope for college programs. Picture the trip to a favorite destination (Las Vegas, Disneyland/World, etc.) and the sense of anticipation and possibility when the plane doors open.

The Rainbow Wahine volleyball team has spent the last two weeks preparing to embark on their return season after having their 2020-21 schedule wiped out by the Big West’s cancellation of fall sports. Along the way, there remained the cross-your-fingers prospect of having fans back in the arena for Friday’s opener against Fairfield. So too for the Warrior football team’s on-campus debut on Sept. 4.

But the numbers — rising infections and dwindling availability of hospital beds — have at least delayed those plans with the City and County of Honolulu’s ruling to bar spectators for the opening weekends at SimpliFi Arena, Ching Field and Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium.

So the Wahine will play their first three matches of the season in the Hawaiian Airlines Rainbow Wahine Classic this weekend without the atmosphere so renowned in volleyball circles — just as the men did in the spring.

Connection to the larger community remains one of the program’s distinguishing traits and will no doubt endure the current separation. So while there is disappointment in the moment, there’s still hope that they will not end the season in silence.