Senior Night is always an emotional affair. But for this year’s Hawaii soccer seniors, there will be an important added incentive attached to the match.
As the regular season winds down with their final homestand followed by a road game, the Rainbow Wahine (4-5-3, 3-3-1) find themselves in position to secure their second-ever Big West Conference Tournament berth.
“It’s hard, there’s so much emotion that goes into Senior Night,” Wahine head coach Michele Nagamine said. “It’s really hard to focus on the game because everybody is all over the place emotionally. But hopefully we honor this group of seniors the way that we should.”
A playoff berth would be an ideal way to honor the seniors. The top six teams in the conference standings earn playoff spots. If the season ended today, Big West No. 5 Hawaii would be in.
The last time the Rainbow Wahine saw the field, they were in a second-place tie with Cal Poly and trailing Cal State Fullerton by two points. During the ensuing bye week, the Wahine watched as their competitors made up ground or surged ahead. Cal Poly now leads the conference with 16 points, while the five teams below Hawaii (10 points) trail by just three points or less.
“I’d like second place better,” Nagamine joked when asked about being in fifth. “With two games off this week, we knew the rest of the conference would be catching up. We’re just trying to get into the Big West Tournament and make that top six.”
“Hopefully we have a good performance this week at home. It’s going to be massive; Santa Barbara on Thursday and Cal Poly on Sunday. We’re expecting a big crowd.”
Despite falling in the standings, the consensus around the team is that the timing of the bye week was a positive.
“I think the extra rest was very much needed,” midfielder Mia Foster said. “Our team is in a very different situation than the other (Big West) teams because of all the travel. This bye week gives us a little break, a little down time to figure out what we need to put together for the final push. So I think it was good timing.”
“Obviously every team is going to have a different schedule and bye week timing. I think it actually is working out quite well for us,” defender Fabiola Zamora added. “We set ourselves up for success, especially in these last three games. Yeah, it’s a little bit anxiety-inducing watching all these teams surge ahead, but now it’s like we had a little pause in the (playoff) race and now we’re right back in it. And we had a week to prepare for it.”
Getting some points out of the upcoming final homestand would go a long way for UH’s playoff push. The Wahine play UC Santa Barbara tonight before facing conference leader Cal Poly on Sunday.
The Gauchos are ninth in the standings but very much within striking distance of UH with eight points on the year.
This late-season playoff push isn’t new territory for Hawaii. Last year’s Rainbow Wahine came tantalizingly close to a return to the playoffs, just missing the mark with a seventh-place finish.
“The fate is in our hands with making the final six,” midfielder Eliza Ammendolia said. “We fell short slightly last year getting seventh. These next three games we’re going to go in hard, with confidence to get those six points.”
Last year’s near miss didn’t go to waste, as the returning Wahine took important lessons from 2022.
“I think that would be finishing our opportunities,” Ammendiola said about the lessons the team earned from the 2022 playoff push. “We always talk about creating chances, but we never talk about finishing those chances. This year, that was a big change. We didn’t just say ‘let’s create opportunities’, we said ‘let’s create and finish our chances’. That was a big takeaway.”
On Sunday, Hawaii will honor six departing seniors: Foster, Maya Gonzalez, Fabiola Zamora, Chaima Khammar, Brynn Mitchell and Nohara Takayama.
Foster arrived in Manoa from Cal State Fullerton after the 2020 COVID-canceled season. In her first year as a Rainbow Wahine, Foster was one of five players to start in all 14 matches. In 2022, she played in 15 matches, with 14 starts in the midfield. She was fourth on the team with 26 shot attempts and was named to the Big West Commissioner’s Honor Roll. This year has been Foster’s best with UH, as she scored the first four goals of her UH career across 11 starts.
“It means a lot to me,” Foster said, when reflecting about her time at UH. “I never thought collegiate sports was the path for me, until I was a junior in high school. Just getting to play at the next level, and to do it in a place I really love, the people I love, and the community, everything. It’s been really special.”
Gonzalez joined Hawaii as a true freshman in 2020. She had her freshman season taken away by COVID. As a sophomore, she played in 14 matches with six starts, and was named to the Academic All-Big West Honors Team. In 2022, she appeared in 14 of the team’s 15 matches and again made six starts. She started in all four of the Wahine’s shutout efforts. She was named to the Big West Commissioner’s Honor Roll after her junior season.
Fellow 2020 freshman Zamora redshirted in 2021 after an injury, but was still named to the Academic All-Big West Honors Team that year. She made her debut in 2022, coming off the bench in eight matches. She scored her first collegiate goal on Oct. 9 against UC San Diego. This year, Zamora has appeared in 12 matches for UH with eight starts. She picked up her first career assist in a tightly-contested 5-7 loss to Gonzaga on Aug. 30.
Khammar is in the midst of her first season at UH after spending the last five years at UMass Lowell. Khammar has appeared in five matches this year with two starts. She notched her first UH assist against Gonzaga on Aug. 30. Khammar played for the Tunisian National Team in friendly matches in 2021.
Mitchell joined the Rainbow Wahine after three seasons at Saint Mary’s. Mitchell has appeared in eight games for UH this year, making five starts. She’s scored three goals so far in her inaugural season at UH.
Takayama joined UH in 2022 after playing for Keiser University in Florida. As a junior, she played in 14 matches with two starts in midfield. She was named to the Big West Commissioner’s Honor Roll in 2022. She has made eight appearances this year, scoring her first UH goal in a 2-1 win over Cal State Northridge on Sept. 14.
This weekend’s homestand will also serve as a Waipio farewell for two graduate students, Ammendolia and Kelci Sumida. They are the only players left from 2019 when UH made the Big West tournament for the only time in school history.
“In 2019 when I made it, I didn’t really understand the value of it. After COVID, and then just falling short, I think we’re all pretty hungry for this one,” Ammendolia said. “We want to get it back. We deserve to be in the top four and I think we can do it.”
While mulling their futures last year, Ammendolia and Sumida took part in Senior Night festivities. Both eventually decided to return for one last ride, but the time draws near for them to say farewell again.
“It hit me last week that it was going to be my final home week. Which was really upsetting, because I love playing at home,” Ammendolia said. “We get a nice crowd every time. I’m definitely going to miss that. I’m sad that it’s my final games, but hopefully we get the No. 1 seed and we can bring the finals back home to play in front of the home crowd again.”
“(The team) is excited, they’re hungry, and they’re really eager to make this happen for our fans. We have some very loyal followers at Waipio,” Nagamine added about the possibility of hosting playoff games. “They are texting us when we are on the road, they show up early for the games, they’ve been there with us since the beginning of the season. We really want to make sure that we do our best for them.”
For Nagamine, her staff, and the underclassmen, the final three games of the season represent a good opportunity to honor the seniors.
“It means everything to us. They don’t say it, but I know that they feel it,” Nagamine said. “They really want to make sure that they honor this group of seniors the right way and send them out on the best note that we possibly can. This group went through the pandemic, they’re one of the last of the pandemic classes. But it was really hard to stay focused, and they did. They stayed on task, and have now poised themselves to get a spot in the Big West Conference tournament. That’s what we set out to do at the beginning of the year. To honor this group of seniors this way, is the best way I can think of.”
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Wahine soccer
At Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium
>> What: Hawaii Rainbow Wahine final homestand
>> When: Today vs. UC Santa Barbara, 7:05 p.m.; Sunday vs. Cal Poly, 4 p.m.
>> TV: Today, Spectrum Sports; Sunday, none
>> Admission: Free
>> Note: Senior Night ceremony following Sunday’s match
