HILO — A 17-match slate awaits the UH-Hilo Women’s Soccer team in the upcoming fall.
It’ll be the first time in three seasons the Vulcans will be the ones doing the hunting after having captured the 2021 and 2022 Pacific West Conference Championships. Last fall, Point Loma not only managed to dethrone UH-Hilo, but also went all the way to claim the 2023 NCAA Division II Women’s Soccer National Championship.
The fall also brings upon the addition of three schools in Jessup University (Rocklin, California), Menlo College (Atherton, California) and Vanguard University (Costa Mesa, California) from the NAIA’s Golden State Athletic Conference. With more teams added, it makes for an unbalanced conference slate, meaning the Vulcans will not play Point Loma and Concordia University Irvine this season — both who finished top two in 2023.
This year will also feature the inaugural PacWest Conference Soccer Championships with the top four teams clashing in a two-round postseason tournament set for Nov. 14-16 at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California.
“Our plate will be full this fall against some of the top teams in the West region. We are eager to compete and see how we progress throughout the season,” ninth-year UH- Hilo head coach Gene Okamura said. “We are adding three teams to the PacWest and a conference tournament which will create a new but exciting dynamic.”
On paper, perhaps the toughest section will be a season-opening three-game road trip through Southern California and then to the Pacific Northwest to take on Cal State Los Angeles, Cal State San Bernardino and Seattle Pacific. CSULA finished No. 3 in the California Collegiate Athletic Association with an exit in the NCAA West Regional Second Round while SPU claimed the Great Northwest Athletic Conference regular season title with a NCAA West Regional runner-up finish.
The Vulcans will have their home opener Sept. 19 against Western Oregon, who finished third in the GNAC.
Other home matches include an exhibition with HPU along with PacWest Conference games against Academy of Art, Dominican, Jessup, Menlo, Fresno Pacific and Chaminade.
Five Vulcans
earn NABC honors
Five Hawai’i Hilo Men’s Basketball student-athletes earned recognition for academic excellence as they were named to the 2023-24 National Association of Basketball Coaches Honors Court for finishing the school year with a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher.
The NABC Honors Court includes junior, senior and graduate student-athletes as Cameron Wall (Bachelor’s of Business Administration – Finance), Drew Yezbak (Bachelor’s of Business Administration), Jake Kosakowski (Anthropology), Nadjrick Peat (Business Administration – Finance) and Zoar Nedd (Linguistics) were the five Vulcans represented among over 2,100 collegiate basketball players earning spots.
“The NABC is proud to celebrate these accomplished student-athletes, along with the coaches and staff who champion success in the classroom,” NABC Executive Director Craig Robinson said. “Education is a core value of the NABC, and the teams and athletes who earned these awards are proof that academic achievement remains a priority across every level of our sport.”
The UH-Hilo Men’s Basketball team helped make it another banner year of academic excellence as Vulcans Athletics combined to post an overall 2023-24 GPA of 3.28.
