The resume-building continues for top-ranked Hawaii.
This week’s Raising Cane’s Classic volleyball tournament field may not be sexy, but it is solid with nonconference opponents. The Rainbow Warriors see members of three of the four other leagues in Emmanuel (Conference Carolinas), Harvard (Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association) and Grand Canyon (Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) in the first of their two home tournaments and last Stan Sheriff Center appearances until the Jan. 24 match against the alumni.
“At this time of the season everybody’s a good opponent for us,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said. “We have some good teams coming in here. We’ve got to continue to get better. We know we have a lot of work to do.
“We played a lot of guys last week. With 21 guys on the roster, 14 of them are in their first or second year, we’re pretty young. We’ve seen the performance in the practice gym. Guys have worked really hard and improved a lot, and that they were able to contribute when they got in is a positive for us going forward.”
Hawaii ran its home winning streak to 19 after two sweeps of Charleston (W.Va.) last week. The Warriors also have won their last 16 against nonconference opponents.
The last meeting with Grand Canyon was in 2018, a straight-set win at the Grow the Game Challenge in Nashville. Hawaii is 6-0 against GCU at the Sheriff Center.
In the only meeting with Harvard, the Warriors swept the Crimson in the 2016 Outrigger Invitational.
This is the third year — and third sponsor — for the Rainbow Warrior Classic. The constant has been Rado Parapunov, who has been named to the all-tournament team the past two seasons.
Parapunov is second on the team in kills with 13 in five sets, hitting .364. The Warriors are led by senior hitter Colton Cowell, who has 18 kills playing in all six sets.
Seventeen of the 21 players on the Hawaii roster played last week. The only ones who didn’t were junior transfer Garrett Geiger, an outside hitter, redshirt freshman middle Danny Wong, and true freshman hitters Kahea Kamalani and Chaz Galloway.
Galloway missed the first week of practice due to oral surgery. He returned to the team on Saturday and has been cleared to practice this week.
Also, Warriors freshman Guilherme Voss was named the conference freshman of the week, the first time in three seasons of Big West play that a Hawaii player has earned the award. The 6-foot-7 middle had five kills and four blocks in the two matches, hitting .500 on Friday and .667 on Saturday against Charleston.
A look at the opponents:
Emmanuel (0-0): The Lions were picked to finish seventh out of eight in the Conference Carolinas preseason coaches poll. The Franklin Springs, Ga., school finished 10-19 and 5-11, nearly knocking off conference co-champion King, losing in five in the final match of 2019.
Emmanuel’s young 11-member roster has six freshmen, including two Germans in 6-foot-7 middle Philipp Lauter and 6-6 setter Henrik Westhoff.
Senior middle Don Thompson, a King Kekaulike teammate of Hawaii’s Colton Cowell, was a second-team all-conference pick last year. He is on Off The Block’s Ryan Millar Award watch list, an honor given to the nation’s best middle.
“I’ve been able to follow his career and his team’s progression,” Cowell said of Thompson. “He’s doing a lot for them. It’s cool to see him evolve, from a guy who picked up volleyball late in high school and now developed into a powerhouse in Conference Carolinas. I’m super excited to see him.”
Thompson, Lauter and senior hitter Aleksa Lakic from Serbia were the three “Players to Watch” from Emmanuel as submitted by coach James Friddle. Friddle was two-time all-conference opposite at King, finishing his career (2008-12) as the Tornado’s all-time kills leader.
Friddle is in his second season as both the women’s and men’s coach at Emmanuel. The Lions women have won back-to-back conference tournaments and advanced to the NCAA Division II tournament. Friddle is the third coach since the program was established in 2014 at the NAIA level. He recently was named to VolleyballMag.com’s Under 40 Coaching Hotshots list.
Harvard (0-0): The Crimson are on the road until February, opening in Honolulu followed by matches at the Daemon Invitational in Amherst, N.Y., and the EIVA opener at Sacred Heart on Jan. 31.
Harvard lost one senior (middle Trevor Dow) from a team that went 6-16 overall and 5-9 and tied for fifth in the EIVA. Among the 11 returnees are former Punahou players Ryan Hong, a 6-2 sophomore hitter/middle, and 6-6 setter Buddy Scott, a Honolulu Star-Advertiser Fab 15 pick as a junior who finished his high school career in California.
Senior Matthew Ctvrtlik, a 6-5 setter, is the son of three-time Olympian Bob, an All-American at Pepperdine. Former Warriors middle Bill Via is a volunteer assistant; he was the UH single-season leader in hitting percentage and blocks (1984-86) and in aces (1984-85).
Grand Canyon (0-0): The ’Lopes finished 13-16, 3-9 in their second season in the MPSF. The Phoenix school spent its first eight seasons in the Midwest Intercollegiate Volleyball Association.
Junior Avery Enriques (Kamehameha-Hawaii) is one of two liberos for fifth-year coach Matt Werle. The other is sophomore Cole Udall, named to the MPSF all-freshman team after leading the league in digs per set (2.02).
Sophomore hitter Christian Janke returns after an impressive season in which he played the second-most sets in the country (112). He led GCU in kills (331) and aces (27), and was second in digs (167).
Junior hitter David Kisiel was second on the team in kills (251), with double-digit kills in 10 of the final 15 matches as well as 12 aces.
Back for his redshirt freshman season is hitter Camden Gianni, who suffered cardiac arrest during GCU’s first practice on Dec. 28, 2018. He had open-heart surgery 10 days prior but had been cleared to practice; athletic trainer Deborah Storm and assistant Dennis Flowers were credited with saving Gianni’s life. The 6-5 Gianni has been cleared to play this season.
Last October, Werle officiated the wedding of his former player Sean Saxton.