You know, there’s an expression to this, but I can’t seem to think of one at the top of my head. But soccer is probably the most underwhelming sport to watch on OC16/Spectrum Sports. Under Nagamine’s tenure as head coach while in BWC play, in terms of televised games where her teams have won in conference play, she’s 7-11-1 in terms of games won while televised (I’m sure it’s probably much bigger, but I can’t quite fathom if any other games prior to 2012 to 2018 in which any, if all, BWC games were televised). After 2016, the team was so close to making it to 10 wins, but fell to Northridge in 2OT. 2017 was not even close at all, having gone 6-10-1 to the season. 2018, I’m sure had that Hurricane Lane-false alert not occurred, I’m sure they could have got a win at least either Montana or Arizona State, but probably more likely on Montana. But once again, we finish 9-7-1. There just seems to be something missing out of Nagamine’s teams that she’s coached, but what could it be? It’s hard to figure that part out, and especially since it’s been 12 years since the soccer team made it to the NCAA, and that was during the WAC years. However, it’s just hard to find the correct balance of players who can be a spark for the team nowadays. A lot of good mainland schools end up getting all the good recruits and we’re basically picking ones out of the bottom of the barrel. How can we compete with much larger blue-collar schools in terms of recruiting? That’s a toughie, especially because Hawaii’s kind of a far-away state for a lot of the states in the east coast. There’s gotta be a way for our school to get back on track in terms of recruiting good enough players that can help the team out in the long run. It’s just about developing confidence in the young players and understand how the veteran players do it. I just hope Nagamine doesn’t continue going through a roller coaster year with this program because there’s gotta be a time she will have a good team that will be good enough to win a chance for the BWC conference title.

Glad to hear Kelci Sumida played well in her freshman debut.