Bulldogs Host Water Polo Tourney

Wednesday - March 05, 2008
By Jack Danilewicz
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In a sense, the road to a berth in May’s state water polo championships begins for Kaimuki this weekend when the Bulldogs host the second annual Kaimuki Classic.

While the tournament is only a part of the preseason, the Bulldogs know they’ll have to post a top-six finish in the OIA this spring to earn one of the league’s state tournament berths. With seven OIA teams (Castle, Roosevelt, Kaiser, Kalaheo, Leilehua and Pearl City in addition to Kaimuki) in this year’s field, the Classic can be seen as a preview of the upcoming regular season.

“We should be able to see where we’re at after this weekend,” said coach Corey Fellezs, whose team opens tournament play on Friday against Roosevelt at 3:30 at the Kaimuki pool.“It is kind of a show-and-tell event and a chance to see the other teams. It’s a chance for coaches to feel out their teams and for the kids to see the game played. We planned this as a springboard into the season.”


Nearly half of Fellezs’ nine team members are newcomers to the sport and will be competing in a game for the first time.

“It’s not like basketball where you grow up knowing what the sport looks like,” added Fellezs, a former UH water polo player.“Usually, we like to take them (newcomers) to a UH game, but this year we will already have played some ourselves before we can do that.”

Like a lot of other water polo coaches at the prep level in Hawaii, Fellezs also coaches swimming at Kaimuki. While it is a natural progression for a lot of swimmers to take up water polo, Fellezs has also had players join the water polo program who had not yet learned to swim. One such player is Kaimuki’s Jessica Yuk, an up-and-coming junior guard/goalkeeper.

“She wanted to be part of a team, but she had no experience playing water polo or swimming, so we had to teach her to swim first,” said Fellezs, who’s assisted by Rumi Yogi.

Sophomore Maile Ishikawa is new to water polo, having joined the program only last summer, but came to the Bulldogs from the swim team and already is figuring big into Fellezs’ plans.

“She’s inexperienced, but she’ll grow to be one of our best players,” he said.

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Senior Traci Taniguchi is the team leader, meanwhile.A three-year varsity player, she’ll hold down the “whole-set” position for Kaimuki, which finished 7-4 in OIA encounters last spring.

“The few girls we do have with experience are good leaders, and they’ve been very good at teaching the other kids what they know, which makes my job easier. They work together as a unit.”

The Kaimuki Classic is Thursday through Saturday, with the first two days devoted to first-round games. On Thursday, Pac-Five meets Leilehua at 3:30 with a match-up between Kaiser and Kalaheo to follow at 4:45. On Friday, following Kaimuki’s game with Roosevelt, Castle and Pearl City will play at 4:45 p.m. Saturday’s match-ups will be determined by Thursday and Friday’s results.

Kaimuki opens its regular season March 15 at home against Kaiser.

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