People of a certain age inevitably incur issues with memory retention, and no snickering, you youngsters, just give it some time and you’ll see for yourself.
It’s only a natural thing that Peter Pua can’t remember with a sharp degree of precision when he first started playing volleyball, but by family consensus, the understanding is that at least by the age of 6, if not 5, he was falling down the rabbit hole into an endless, fulfilling, life-defining world of sets and digs, kills and blocks.
It’s still that way for Pua, at 79, looking trim and ready for a few sets, or maybe one set. OK, at least a couple of games.
This is a distinctively eventful week for Pua and all Big Island volleyball enthusiasts because it is the week annually reserved for the Haili Tournament, once a veritable World Series of volleyball. It isn’t all that it once was, owing to the profusion of tournaments that emerged in the last 25 years on the mainland and all over the world in response to the growth of the sport.
Pua will be at it again this week as a member of the Big Island Boys team — including other family members — at the 60th Haili Tournament at Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium.
All those mainland and international visitors don’t make the trip like they used to, but for people here, the Haili is a tournament circled in red on the calendar.
And it doesn’t matter how many times you competed. Things have changed for Pua as they change for all of us. One constant has been volleyball.
“We used to play everyday,” Pua said last week from his Papaaloa home, “I still want to play everyday, but these bones are getting old.”
The home sits on the side of a hill with a magnificent, uninterrupted, full 180 degree view of the Pacific Ocean where wife Flo still marvels at whale sitings and the dolphins that always seem to dance along joyfully. They look out at the world and still, after all these years, their lives can be said to continue to revolve around volleyball.
Far removed from the Seventh Day Adventist church keiki tournaments in which he played, long after his successful Hilo High School career and following his 11 years in the San Francisco Bay Area where he and Flo worked and played, chances are Peter Pua still plays more volleyball than most Big Island residents.
He’s a libero these days, but if you retrace his path, you learn of the times he was a devastating outside hitter, the one spiker you didn’t want to see rise up to deliver at the net. He was, they say, the best setter around for years and one thing Pua always had that separated him from most competent players, was his uncanny ability to dive and dig.
That’s essentially his role these days as a backline player who keeps the game in shape and on balance for his team. He gives them life, a second chance to win a point when he makes those plays on the back line.
If there is someone who has competed in more of these, event organizers and others would like them to come forward, but unofficially, no one knows of anyone who has played in more of these tournaments than Pua.
Flo, an active player in her own right, calculated the time they went to California for work after none was to be found locally. Peter worked construction, primarily in his skills with the lathe, and there was a time after high school when employers wanted workers of a certain culture and not from other cultures.
“We all lived in Keaukaha growing up,” he said, “but when you applied for work, they would say, ‘Where are you from?’ and you would say, ‘Keaukaha,’ and they would say, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have any openings.’”
A series of those rejections prompted the move, and Flo counted off the years, recalled when they returned to the Big Island and determined this will be her husband’s 44th or 45th — who’s really counting, anyway? — competitive experience at Haili, this time in the Masters competition.
He coached both boys’ and girls’ teams at Laupahoehoe, later coached the girls team at Hilo and he still recalls those church teams he played for and coached in the Bay Area that always seemed to win the biggest tournament in Salt Lake City.
“Oh yes,” he said grinning at the memory, “we got in our cars and vans and drove seven hours just to play.”
For Pua, as seems to be the case with a remarkable number of other players here, there was never another sport. He didn’t play Little League baseball, was never interested in basketball and didn’t play soccer or football.
“I had all I needed,” he said, pointing a photograph of him hitting at the net, “with this. I just wanted to get better all the time.”
For that, he is respected by everyone in the Big Island volleyball community. Pua’s interest in the sport never wavered, his understanding of the game seemed somehow inherent and his advice was always good, if not simple.
Flo remembers high school coaches at various times asking her husband to watch their teams practice or play and provide some counsel, maybe make some recommendations. Generally, the responses were not immediate erasers for anything teams were doing wrong, but they blueprints for how to play more effectively as a team.
“It is a team sport,” he said, “and if you don’t play like a team it will be very hard to win, very hard.
“Individually, the best thing you can do is work on your jumping, if you can get another inch or two higher when you hit, that’s a big advantage; work on your legs, work on your stomach muscles, that will help you be a better player.
“But if you are the best, that’s not enough,” he said. “The one who makes the hits that scores the points? How did he get the ball? Was it a good set? Could he have scored with a bad set or no set? Did someone make a dig that created the chance?”
The message is about as old as the sport itself. No one person makes a team but a team full of players who understand their roles and work to become better at those roles will develop their own star players.
Pua had a knack to foil defenses because of his ability to see the full court. He showed how, at the net, against younger opponents, he could often cast his gaze in a certain spot on the floor, a crowd would gather there across the net to defend and Pua would tap the ball into the open spaces left behind.
Is that a little like a no-look pass in basketball?
Pua smiled and nodded in agreement. Crafty, these old guys.
These days, his sons are coaches, his grandson plays and Peter and Flo try to make every match.
This week though, some of the young ones may be watching him and his teammates and if they look closely enough, they might just see how a Master plays the game.
