As a member of the Chaminade men’s soccer team, I wake up at 5 a.m. for a two-hour practice Mondays through Fridays. I go to the gym three times a week on my own after practice. At least once a week, we watch film as a team at 5:30 a.m. before practice, not counting the afternoons I watch film on my own. We have games twice a week, usually on Thursdays and Saturdays. Even in the spring offseason, I wake up every morning at 5 a.m. because we have practice or weights Mondays through Fridays at 5:45 a.m.
When the game days finally come, we get to show all the hard work we put in behind the scenes. We walk out of our locker room that we share with baseball and walk down the stairs through the parking garage to enter the St. Louis football field that has a little over 100 people there to cheer us on during the middle of a hot Hawaii day.
This is just one of the 196 stories from the student-athletes here at Chaminade University.
Division II athletes will never have the same prestigious title or appreciation that Division I players do. That’s how life is; there will always be different levels to everything. It’s interesting to look at the life of these athletes, like at Chaminade, who still choose to show up day in and day out despite many people not even knowing who they are.
The underappreciation is obvious at Chaminade by the attendance at all their sporting events. Last year, the majority of Chaminade games or matches only had around 100 people in attendance. One reason is that the teams play at weird times, like soccer having a game at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. However, this wasn’t the full excuse for low attendance. Chaminade volleyball, which won the PacWest Conference last year and went to the NCAA Tournament, had only 132 fans at its most recent home game against Dominican, which was played at 6 p.m. While four days earlier, a UH women’s volleyball match against Portland had an attendance of 5,950.
Another huge blow to the athletes at Chaminade is the facilities. Volleyball, basketball, and tennis are the only sports that have home courts/fields at Chaminade. All other sports share a location, or they use a public one. Baseball’s home field changes throughout the year between three different fields: UH’s baseball stadium, Hans L’Orange Field, and Patsy T. Mink Central O’ahu Regional Park Baseball Complex. Softball finds itself playing games 30 minutes from campus at an old, rundown field at Sand Island Park. It looks worse than most high school fields as it’s missing a scoreboard, and even during one game, the play had to be stopped because one of the fences in the outfield swung open. Even though basketball and volleyball have their own gymnasium, it’s just the old Saint Louis High School gym with the rafters lined with the Crusaders’ championship banners.
Despite all these negatives, one factor that remains constant is the players’ love for their sport. Competing every day fuels these athletes, and they get to do so at Chaminade.
Playing at the Division II level is no joke. The skill level of these players is very high, and some can still go on to play professionally. There are schools at the Division II level that can beat Division I schools. The Chaminade baseball team last year beat Division I Wichita State 6-4. Also, the basketball team has been known for its upsets against Division I schools in the Maui Invitational.
Chaminade student athletes deserve even more respect because, being in Hawaii, they travel more than most other Division II schools. They travel to the mainland multiple times during their season and stay for multiple days, which results in missing a lot of class. The Silverswords still had 152 Academic All-PacWest student-athletes last year, which beat their previous record that was set the year before at 145. This is a testimony of how hard these players work on and off the field, even if the recognition doesn’t feel like it’s there.
A respect should grow from not only fellow students, but also people in the community towards Division II athletes because of how hard they can push themselves, even when it feels like nobody cares or is watching. Nobody will hear about the women’s basketball player who had 10 points in Chaminade’s last game, but she will continue to work hard to do it again in the next game. It’s almost a stronger pushing factor to try to get somebody to recognize you.
Around Chaminade’s campus, there is a good chance you will see a student-athlete. Next time you see one around campus, just tell that athlete they are doing a good job because they are working hard every day, whether they receive validation or not.