Shorter Off-season Keeps Sabers Busy, Conditioned

Wednesday - July 18, 2007
By Jack Danilewicz
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For Campbell girls’ head basketball coach Nathan Macadangdang, keeping his team on track during the summer means adhering to an unrelenting pace.

“A lot of this summer has been about our conditioning and getting stronger,“he said.“We played close to thirty games during the spring, including our pre-season and the state tournament, and we were kind of beat up at the end. Hopefully, we’re getting in better shape. We have to up the bar there this year. When we start to tire, our focus suffers and we begin to make mistakes. Hopefully, the seniors will realize this is the way to go. I’m counting on them to step it up.”


This past spring saw the Sabers enjoy a break through year. They were the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division II runner-up to McKinley and made the school’s first state tournament appearance in girls basketball since the early 1990s, finishing 14-4 overall.

Although the program lost a handful of steady players from that team, including centers Jenny Sweeney and Ipo Kila, the Sabers figure to be among the teams to beat next season. With the Hawaii High School girls’ basketball season moving from spring to winter in the coming academic year, a long off-season wait just became a lot shorter. Indeed, the Sabers will likely begin their conditioning program as soon as classes commence at Campbell next month. The quick turnaround also leaves less time for a player to lose ground conditioning-wise after a busy summer schedule in which the Sabers played 11 games between the Roosevelt Summer League and a tournament at Sacred Hearts.

“Hopefully, it (short off-season) will benefit us,“Macadangdang said. “The girls had a good summer, and we want to build on last year and get better.”

In point guard Amber Kaulia and forward Vai Confer, the Sabers will have two of Division II’s better players to build around. Kaulia had a stellar season this spring, while Confer’s development this summer has been among the highlights of Campbell’s summer.

“Amber is our ‘Steady Freddy,‘and Vai has stepped up her game a lot more after having an abbreviated season this spring because of her injury,“Macadangdang said.“She’s worked on her whole game. At 5-9, she can handle the ball, and she’s real strong and she’s quick. She presents a lot of match-up problems.”


Among Campbell’s priorities this summer was to re-emphasize its defensive play.

“We want to up our defensive intensity,” said Macadangdang. “We were so offensive-minded, we kind of let that (defensive) part slide. We want to pick that part of our game up and be more aggressive.”

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