By Gary Dickman.
It’s obvious that the most popular sports topic these days is University of Hawaii football. It’s hard to believe that the Rainbow Warriors are almost done with this very unique season. That was a very impressive win over a really good Nevada team.
I’ve been doing the postgame portion of UH football home games, now known as “The Fan’s Voice,” for eight or nine years now, and the calls and texts that came in after the Nevada game were as positive as any other win ever. I’d say there were two negative texts, and maybe one negative call. I’m not used to having so many happy, positive calls. I almost missed the creative, unusual and angry calls.
As I write this, I’m also thinking and excited that UH basketball is about to start. It feels kind of strange watching college basketball on TV the last week or so and not having our Rainbow Warriors playing. But that’s about to change. It should be announced by the time you’re reading this, but the season will start on Wednesday, December 9. As of now, only three games will be played before Big West play starts on December 27. This year, teams are only allowed to schedule 27 games maximum. So for Big West teams, that leaves a max of seven non-conference games. Some schools have been able to schedule seven non-conference games, while a few only had a few at last report. Seeing that quite a few games were already cancelled, maybe it’s a good thing to start a little later, and not travel before conference play starts.
This is the first time since Riley Wallace was the head coach that I haven’t been to any practices. So I don’t know much about the new players, I don’t know who will be the starting point guard yet. But I am excited for several returning players in Samuta Avea, Justin Webster and Bernardo DeSilva. And like with football, I’m just glad college basketball is back.
This is a tough week for me. On December 2, 2018, my brother Marty passed away. He had Parkinson’s and Dementia. It obviously hit me hard then, and the memories keep pouring into my head this week. I’ve got two older brothers, but Marty and I were very always close. We grew up with similar interests in food, music, tv shows and sports. And when I say music, both of us were always big Bruce Springsteen fans. We both have seen Bruce seven or eight times, once at the same concert but didn’t sit together. We both really wanted to see Springsteen on Broadway, a one-man play with Springsteen talking and singing about his life. We had both tried several times to get these tickets – an almost impossible task. The price was $850, that was the regular price. We both exhausted the legal brokers, like Stub Hub and others, and almost bought tickets at $1200-1600 just knowing how special a show it was. And I eventually got tickets through a lottery-type system, and we were able to go in.
March of 2018. Eighth row, dead center. Wow. This ended up being a great show, worth the money and the time invested. It turned out to be the last thing he and I did together, just the two of us. I saw him a few times after that, with lots of family around, and that was good. But as I think about this anniversary, I remember how we had our last time together, doing exactly how we both would have wanted it. Seeing Bruce Springsteen up close.
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