A few years ago as he helped a friend make a short documentary on the University of Hawaii Wahine volleyball team, filmmaker Dean Kaneshiro found himself listening to a story that didn’t make sense.
The Wahine volleyball players were the rock stars of UH athletics — he grew up in Hawaii and knew that. They had won national championships. Legions of little girls coveted their autographs. Fans applauded them at restaurants.
But the story told by a tearful Beth McLachlin — one of the original players when the team formed in 1974 — was a tale of discrimination. Of teams that had to fight for equal access to practice courts. And supporters who risked their reputations to create gender equity in Hawaii.
Kaneshiro had never heard any of that. When he told his friends, they thought he was joking.
"It was so crazy, and it happened in my own backyard," said the 37-year-old Kaneshiro, who decided to turn it into a documentary, "Rise of the Wahine."
The 90-minute film will premiere Monday at a Hawaii International Film Festival screening at the Hawaii Theatre.
Kaneshiro found a local narrative that was dramatic, profoundly far-reaching and nearly forgotten.
Hiding in plain sight was the story of how Title IX enabled the Wahine to rise to athletic prominence and elevate women’s sports in Hawaii.
‘RISE OF THE WAHINE’
» Where: Hawaii Theatre, 1130 Bethel St.
» When: 7 p.m. Monday
» Cost: $11-$15
» Info: 447-0577, www.hiff.org |
The landmark federal legislation, co-sponsored by the late Hawaii Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink, mandates equal financing for women’s athletics and academics. Mink and UH women’s athletic director Donnis Thompson used it as leverage to create opportunities for women at the University of Hawaii.
In many ways Thompson is the heart of the story. She had a vision few others possessed, Kaneshiro said.
Arriving at the university in 1972, the same year Title IX was passed, Thompson oversaw the growth of women’s sports at UH during her nine years as athletic director.
The volleyball team was her flagship.
"There was no one believing," Kaneshiro said. "She believed when others did not. She had to make something that did not exist, and she had to risk her reputation. And she had to risk making a blunder at a time when many people said women don’t deserve this."
Kaneshiro interviewed former players, coaches and commentators. He found archive footage of Wahine games and of Thompson and Mink, both of whom have died — Mink in 2002, Thompson in 2009.
When Kaneshiro interviewed former state Rep. Faith Evans, an early supporter of Thompson’s cause, she brought out a folder of newspaper articles she had kept since the 1970s.
"She handed it to us like it was some kind of relic and said, ‘I have saved this for all these years, and I didn’t know why until now,’" Kaneshiro said. "She passed away five or six months after we interviewed her."
A few months ago associate athletic director Marilyn Moniz-Kaho‘ohanohano gave Kaneshiro two old garbage bags full of Thompson’s memorabilia.
They were a stark reminder that the Wahine’s story was being lost, Kaneshiro said. The bags were full of speeches, tournament programs, plaques and photographs — all of it covered with mold so toxic that Kaneshiro wore gloves and a mask.
Most of it was damaged beyond use, but one mottled photo Thompson had kept spoke volumes. The shot from 1976 was taken from the highest spot in the Blaisdell Arena and captured the Wahine and the largest Hawaii crowd at the time to ever see women play volleyball.
"Thompson kept that for decades," Kaneshiro said. "She won the hearts of the state."
For his documentary, Kaneshiro teamed up with Tiffany Taylor, a friend with whom he had collaborated while working for a few years on the East Coast.
The Wahine not only underscored the struggle for women’s rights; they were the ultimate underdog, she said.
"This was a scrappy group of small women from a small island who were led by women of incorrigible vision, and they took not only the sport, but the hearts of the people of Hawaii by storm — and very quickly," Taylor said. "And I loved that."
Although Title IX was an education amendment, Thompson applied it to athletics, Taylor said.
Thompson worked with Mink and took the Wahine volleyball team on a field trip to Washington, D.C., to meet the congresswoman. Thompson wanted the players to know who was fighting for them, Taylor said.
Thompson also gathered like-minded women to her cause, and together they became pioneers.
"Donnis was instrumental in saying now that Title IX is passed, let us do whatever it takes to drive that equality and that opportunity for women," Taylor said. "Because they drove so hard to say we are grabbing this for women’s athletics, it really shook things up."
The documentary should remind people of that.
Mink’s daughter, Wendy, said a lot of people know about Title IX and its legacy of opportunity but not the struggle that came with it.
"This film shines a light on a seminal moment in our history and reminds us what we can accomplish by daring to dream, struggling with resolve and moving forward in solidarity," she said. "Wahine volleyball came into being in the immediate aftermath of Title IX’s enactment as law, at a time of intense opposition to the idea that women’s athletics should be treated equitably by colleges and universities."
Dave Shoji, who has been the head coach of the Wahine team for 40 years, would like his players to see the film. He wants them to know their roots.
"I don’t think they have any idea what we went through early on to get where they are," he said. "They have grown up with this idea that women are pretty equal with the men."
For Beth McLachlin, the former Wahine player who first inspired Kaneshiro, the film is a powerful reminder of how far women have come. Even now, when she talks about changes, she chokes up.
When she was growing up in Southern California, girls who played sports were called "sweat hogs," McLachlin said. They were shunned by friends who didn’t play sports because they thought boys would ignore them.
The struggle for acceptance continued at UH when she played on that first Wahine team.
"The people who were coming and watching us play and seeing how good we were became avid fans," said McLachlin, now 64. "But the sportswriters couldn’t care less."
On the morning the Wahine prepared to leave for the national championships in 1977, McLachlin was on the phone with a radio deejay railing at him for ignoring the team in his sports report. He had gone on at length about UH’s losing football and basketball teams but said nothing about the Wahine, then ranked No. 2 in the nation.
He told McLachlin no one cared about womens’s sports.
That same year a TV sports reporter had also interviewed McLachlin and asked her if she wished she was a boy. She was flabbergasted.
"The cameras were rolling, but if they weren’t I think I would have decked him," she said. "I said of course I don’t want to be a boy. Women athletes are just women athletes. We like to exercise and we like to do things, and we are capable of doing a lot."
Two years later the Wahine proved her point: They won the national championship for women’s collegiate volleyball.
