#249 - 6'4"

6'4"

that's amber kaufman's WAC championship gold medal high jump. it's also her personal record, a UH record, and the highest outdoor high jump by any woman (collegiate or otherwise) in the US this year. that's just amazing, imagine, that's like completely jumping over any of her volleyball teammates with at least an inch to spare! they showed it on the news tonight and i still have no idea how anyone can do that.

anyway, that news clip got me searching on the internet and you wouldn't believe how many wahine volleyball clips there are on youtube (or maybe you would, how rude of me to assume that you wouldn't believe, sorry, because i hate when tv show commercials tell me the same thing... "you won't believe what happens in the last 10 seconds!"). and that got me thinking about volleyball last season... i greatly under-rated last season. for some reason in my mind it wasn't so great (it's that darn new mexico state that's making me change my WAC views)... but really, they ended up 31-4 and in the NCAA regional finals (after all those willoughby/kahumoku/kamana'o years i guess i got too used to the final fours), losing to national runner-up stanford. and along the way they beat minnesota, USC, purdue, and, in what was easily the best game of the year, washington.

nevermind "best game of the year," that was in my top 5 games i've ever been to! it was fantastic! there's even a great clip of it on youtube featuring amber kaufman, because she had a record 12 aces or something like that against #9 washington (who also ended the season in the regional finals, losing to nebraska). man, i totally lost my voice after that game, and i forgot all about it because it was at the beginning of the season. who knew kanani herring/danielson would go on to be the star of the team (along with kaufman) and be the WAC freshman of the year (and, a lot of coaches thought, should have been the national freshman of the year as well)? but that was a classic. right up there with hawaii's win of USC in the regional semifinals (when hawaii was a BIG underdog) when they went 5 games and kamana'o reeled off 12 straight points after being down 2-3 in game 5 to win it 15-5. and also the two stanford matches during the willoughby/kahumoku years, those were spectacular games... i don't go to all of the games ('cause they're all on tv), but i know which ones are gonna be the great ones, and i make sure to go to those. next year's got some doozies, so if you wanna start planning (i already am), mark your calendar for:

Aug. 30 - vs. UCLA
Sep. 5 - vs. Texas! (exclaimation point on this one, plus texas has destiny hooker, who beat out amber kaufman for the gold in high jump at the NCAA indoor championships)
Sep. 6 - vs. California
Sep. 12 - vs. Stanford
Oct. 17 - vs. New Mexico State

and to get your wahine volleyball appetite going...


PS - TENNIS UPDATE!
tomorrow, nadal vs. federer for another masters series event, the last one before the french open. kind of bittersweet though, because novak djokovic had 3 match points against nadal in the semifinals but nadal somehow wins again, sigh. so now root for federer okay... root HARD! go roger!