The run-up to the University of Hawaii’s hottest rivalry of the moment and an obituary from Oregon rekindled memories of one of the fiercest series in school history.

As the Rainbow Warrior volleyball team prepared for a highly anticipated trip to Long Beach State last week, news broke of the passing of long-time San Diego State baseball coach and UH nemesis Jim Dietz at age 83.

The confluence of seemingly disparate events brought to mind the rivalries that have spiced UH schedules in various sports over the decades.

Most are fueled by meetings with championship implications. As such, the volleyball series between the Warriors and Beach arguably tops the active list given their series of matches that have determined Big West or national titles since 2017.

Boosted by a lively crowd at the Walter Pyramid, Long Beach State swept this weekend’s two-match series with seven of the eight sets tied in the 20s. A third high-stakes meeting in the Big West tournament at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center in mid-April would add another layer to a rivalry that has established a place among UH’s storied duels.

Of course, Brigham Young blue had a generation of Hawaii fans seeing red in just about any activity that kept score and UH’s cathartic football victories in 1989, ’90 and ’92 and the 2001 blowout remain landmark moments for the athletic department.

The temperature in already steamy Klum Gym shot up when Pacific or Long Beach State visited for PCAA/Big West women’s volleyball showdowns. Fresno State’s Chris Herren-led basketball teams antagonized the Rainbow Warriors in the Anthony Carter-Alika Smith era. Meetings with Fresno State were circled on the UH softball schedule throughout their tenures in the Big West and Western Athletic Conference.

In terms of shared animus, the Hawaii-San Diego State baseball series of the 1980s and into the early ’90s still holds a place among the most incendiary.

Led by legendary coaches and fierce adversaries in Dietz and Les Murakami, the ’Bows and Aztecs annually battled for division or league titles as WAC powers along with BYU.

Six times between 1981 and 87, UH and SDSU finished first and second in the WAC Southern or Western Division race. When the conference eliminated the division format in 1988, they were among the top two (including ties) four more times over the next five years.

Four times from 1980 to 91, UH and SDSU met on the final day of WAC Tournament with the teams winning two titles each.

“It was a battle every game,” said Markus Owens, UH’s starting third baseman from 1985 to ’87 and now an analyst for Spectrum OC16’s high school baseball telecasts.

“It was one of those rivalries that you just wanted to knock their block off, you wanted to beat them bad. Whether it was here or there it was always tough.”

While San Diego State’s visits turned up the volume in Rainbow Stadium, it was a catwalk beyond the right-field fence at SDSU’s Smith Field that truly elevated the series.

“Raggers’ Rail” ran along neighboring Peterson Gym and became a gathering place for SDSU fans to heckle (to put it mildly) opposing outfielders.

Owens doesn’t recall a lot of potty mouths among the SDSU fans, but there was the time UH pitcher Mike Campbell went out to the bullpen to warm up before his start and found that someone had, well, gone potty on his glove.

“It was not only a battle with the team when you went over there, it was a battle with the fans too,” Owens said. “They were probably as rowdy as you could ever imagine.”

The imagination of the denizens of Raggers’ Rail — who often began (ahem) hydrating hours before first pitch — impressed even the targets of their derision.

“They usually kept it pretty clean, nothing too foul, but what they came up with was so original that it was sometimes just hilarious,” Owens said. “You’d have to stop and listen and just laugh.”

For a pivotal series in 1986, they even influenced lineup strategy.

The Rainbows arrived at Smith Field needing to win one game in the four-game series to clinch the Western Division and the right to host the WAC Tournament. Anticipating the abuse directed toward the right fielder, Murakami assigned the duty to Mark McWherter, shifiting him over from left field.

UH appeared poised to clinch the division in the series opener, taking a 6-1 lead in the fifth inning and protecting a 7-4 cushion in the eighth. The Aztecs got two runs back in the bottom of the eighth, but UH closed to within two outs of the division title when McWherter tracked down a drive in the gap in the ninth.

McWherter then turned toward Raggers’ Rail and showed off the ball in his glove.

“It was like 100,000 people started yelling after that,” Owens said. “It was that loud.”

The Aztecs added to the frenzy by stringing together three hits, winning it 8-7 on Steve Montejano’s two-run single. SDSU went on to sweep the series and swipe the host role for the tournament. They played three more times the following week with San Diego State beating UH in the final.

Owens did get in a final word the following season, when he homered on senior day in Manoa. The 13-6 UH rout included 5-foot-4 senior shortstop Mark Rasmussen, who’d also felt the wrath of Raggers’ Rail in ’86, hitting the lone homer of his college career. A few weeks later, the ’Bows savored another rivalry win when they knocked off BYU in the WAC Tournament final in Provo, Utah.

As he approached home plate after his homer against SDSU in the home finale, Owens did the “Pee Wee Herman dance” at the behest of pitcher Paul Brown.

“That’s the last thing I remember about San Diego State as a player,” Owens said.

“I got them last.”