Every night is senior night for some University of Hawaii men’s volleyball fans.
They are in their 40s, 50s or 60s, and they remember what the homecourt was like at full capacity, 10,000 strong, a decade before some of today’s players were born.
“I thought I was having a dream,” said freshman Finn Kearney after Friday’s match against Long Beach State. “I never heard the place that loud before.”
Other people have.
There are two kinds of Warriors fanatics. Some know who the Rubber Man is, and some are just learning now.
“That’s perfect,” Warriors super fan Jenny Terai said with a laugh. “That’s a good dividing line.”
Terai was there the last time UH men’s volleyball sold out what was then called the Special Events Arena for back-to-back matches, in 1996. And she was there Friday and Saturday at what is now called SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
So was Alan Hackbarth — the aforementioned Rubber Man — who appeared on the DanceCam on Friday, and was a regular fixture as timeout entertainment when the Warriors did everything but win a national championship in the 1990s. That — make that, those — would come later.
“It was great to see him again,” Terai said. “Yeah, I was one of those crazy young girls. It was so much fun, the greatest time of my life. My parents let me skip school.”
Why would she have to play hooky for a night game? Well, in the mid-1990s Terai was a student at Hilo High School. Fortunately, relatives on this island enjoyed the sport, too. So her parents let her fly to Oahu and stay with her grandparents in Pacific Palisades, Yaeko and Seijiro Shiroma. Sometimes they would join Terai and her aunt, June Cabbab, at the matches.
Back then, the biggest UH star was Yuval Katz, but there were plenty of others. Imagine an entire team of guys nearly as popular as Colt Brennan. Players had to be wheeled out of the arena hidden in laundry bins long after matches had ended.
I referred to the crowd as 10,000 Maniacs back then, which I guess is OK, since coach Mike Wilton called the SEA the Special Events Asylum.
His son, Aaron Wilton, was one of Terai’s favorite players.
“I was always about love for the game,” said Terai, who pitched and played second base on the Hilo High softball team, and played club volleyball. “Definitely a bonus that the guys were cute, and a big bonus that they’re cute every year. I had the biggest crush on Aaron Wilton, almost as big as Jason Olive. Jason Olive was my first.”
Many of the young fans moved on to other interests, but Terai never left. If anything, she became an even bigger fan over the years. After graduating from Hilo in 2000 she went to Manoa and earned a degree from UH’s highly regarded School of Travel Industry Management.
She has worked for 16 years at Hawaiian Airlines, where she is an information technology analyst.
“It definitely helps” when it comes to following the Warriors on the road, Terai said of working for an airline.
She was there in person at the past five national championship matches (two won by UH) and saw the U.S. — led by Hawaii alum Taylor Averill — score a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics last year.
She was accompanied by another big fan, her friend Jennifer Wong, at Terai’s 14oth consecutive UH home match Friday. Terai received a ball signed by the Warriors and got to take pictures with the team.
“It’s just some of the many cool things we got to do with the team this year,” said Terai, who participates in a new fan-gifting NIL program
“Fan support exists in a lot of different ways now,” coach Charlie Wade said after Friday’s match.
Terai made it 141 matches in a row Saturday. She laughed when called the Cal Ripken of volleyball fans.
Her husband, Brandon Zercher, and their two sons join her for matches sometimes. But Zercher often has work conflicts because he is a chef at Roy’s Waikiki.
“He’s always been cool with me being this crazy volleyball fan,” she said.
Hackbarth was a UH football player in 1996 who went on to become a firefighter. He’s still got the moves, and he still flirts with disaster. At one point during his brief dancing session during a third-set timeout Friday, it looked like the rail he was holding onto might break.
A rail he was holding onto while dancing did break in the ’90s, said Jason Higashionna, who was there to see it. Hackbarth fell, but not far, and was uninjured, Higashionna added.
KHON associate producer and UH athletics photographer Keilani Martin is 22, and a recent UH graduate. I asked her if she knew anything about the Rubber Man before Friday.
“No, but I know he’s a legend,” Martin said. “I definitely think he brought the most energy (to the crowd Friday). A very few select people can bring that kind of energy.”
Higashionna and his wife, Kathy Yara-Higashionna, are calm, polite people. But once the match starts, they bring the noise — just like they did in the 1990s, when they attended the last back-to-back sellouts.
“My wife has practice from yelling at me, so she didn’t lose her voice,” Jason said, jokingly, early Saturday afternoon. ” I lost mine, but it’s back again and ready for tonight.”
Is it a different vibe than 29 years ago? Or do those of us who are twice as old as we were then remember it differently because of that?
“Remember? It was completely quiet when they served,” Yara-Higashionna said. “That’s how they liked it, especially Yuval.”
I just remember the noise — so consistently loud that you almost forget it is there.
“Back then the fan base was kind of wild,” arena manager Rich Sheriff said. “It was like a frenzied, K-pop fan vibe. Now it’s older, and more here for the great volleyball.”
The game itself is fundamentally different now than before 1998 (introduction of the libero) and 2001 (rally scoring).
“A guy the size of ‘Eleu Choy couldn’t even play back then,” Higashionna said. “Now he’s a key player, making all those great plays.”
The early years of the arena were special in other sports, too. UH media relations director Derek Inouchi pointed out that the year after the back-to-back men’s volleyball sellouts, men’s basketball became a hot ticket, thanks to Anthony Carter and Alika Smith.
“I remember being there for the game when they did the Dynamic Duo, Batman and Robin, with A.C. and Alika,” Higashionna said. “That was also something very special.”
Wade was an assistant coach for the Wahine volleyball team in the early years of the arena.
“It was so new and different,” he said of the big crowds in the beautiful new facility.
It’s still big, and still beautiful nearly three decades later. Especially when it’s full of 10,000 Maniacs including — no bones about it — a Rubber Man.
“This is why guys come here,” Wade said.
