For local prep volleyball teams, the window of opportunity to play pre-season games generally is limited, as the start of league play is less than a month following the official opening of fall camp.<\/p>\n
Teams that participate in the annual Longy Okamoto Girls’ Volleyball Tournament and other pre-season tournaments find they can make up for lost opportunities, however, with the promise of multiple games.<\/p>\n
“A (typical) team will play nine or 10 games over the three days, and this will give the coaches an opportunity to see the combinations (personnel-wise) that work for them,” said Erin Okamoto-Coker, daughter of late Longy Okamoto and one of the organizers of the tournament. “It’s about seeing what the kids can do in a game-type situation.”<\/p>\n
The 2014 Longy Okamoto Tournament is slated for next Thursday, Friday and Saturday (Aug. 21-23) at Pearl City and Waipahu high schools. (All varsity tournament matches will be played at Pearl City, while Waipahu will host a JV\/Blue division tournament.)<\/p>\n
As in past years, the varsity division of the tournament will feature a solid field that includes<\/p>\n
Castle, Campbell, Hanalani, Kapolei, Maryknoll, Moanalua, Saint Francis, University High, Damien, Waianae, Waipahu and Waiakea. Among the participants, are three teams — Division I Moanalua and University High and Saint Francis from DII — that qualified for their respective New City Nissan State Volleyball Tournaments last November.<\/p>\n
“Whoever has come out of it (the Longy tournament) usually is ranked pretty high at the end and goes pretty far in the state (tournament),” said Okamoto-Coker.<\/p>\n
Longy Okamoto was a longtime volleyball coach and fixture in the community, having founded Kamalii Manaloa Club, in addition to having coached at McKinley, among other schools.<\/p>\n
The Longy tournament was established following his death in 1995. Most recently, Pearl City and Waipahu have helped Okamoto-Coker, who is the longtime head boys’ coach at Aiea, in putting the tournament on.<\/p>\n
“A lot of the hard work is done by (Pearl City athletic director) Reid (Shigemasa) and (Pearl City boys’ volleyball coach) Stephanie (Shigemasa),” she said.<\/p>\n
The tournament’s field is divided into pools for the first two days, with their opponents for day three determined by the results of the first two days of play.<\/p>\n
Since there are teams from the same leagues in the tournament, Okamoto-Coker said organizers try not to match conference opponents against one another since they will meet later in the regular season.<\/p>\n
“They might end up playing against each other later, on the third day.<\/p>\n
“Scheduling can be hard,” she said. “We have a mixture of OIA East and West schools and ILH Schools, and we try to separate them (in the first two days of pool play).”<\/p>\n
jackster.1969@yahoo.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For local prep volleyball teams, the window of opportunity to play pre-season games generally is limited, as the start of..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-west-oahu-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n