Faith in The Power Of The Team

Twenty years after helping the UH Wahine win their first national volleyball title, Mahina Eleneki Hugo takes over as the head of La Pietra school

Wednesday - July 11, 2007
By Alice Keesing
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With husband Todd Hugo, a Honolulu firefighter

“There is a certain amount of freedom here ... teachers take their students onto the lawn outside for classes or they can plop down under the trees for their free blocks.”

Hugo, who herself attended the single-gender Sacred Hearts, is an enthusiastic proponent of the all-girls education model. She talks about the confidence, creativity and critical thinking that the school nurtures. About the girls who take off in math or technology or whatever area it is that pushes their buttons - like the student who learned to fly an airplane. Or the one who designed her own fashions and produced her own catwalk show. And the girls who created a club to help clean up the environment. And the town hall meetings where students get to participate in the running of the school.

You get the feeling that, given the chance, Hugo would be doing it all along with her students. She’s got that adventurous spirit that just wants to keep trying things - on her last vacation in California, she donned a wetsuit and free-dived down 20 feet into the chilly kelp forests to find abalone.

“As a kid one of my favorite foods was dried abalone, so to be able to go out and actually shuck my own abalone, that was very exciting for me,” she says, grinning.

Over the years, Hugo has been active in the community, too. She has served on the board of Pop Warner Football and been the business manager and team aunty for her husband’s Pee Wee football teams. She also coached club volleyball for the last nine years,

although time constraints mean she’s had to give that up. These days she gets her only volleyball fix, “fireman style.” Her husband is a firefighter at the Hawaii Kai station and Hugo is a frequent participant in the engine vs. ladder games.

“All the proper rules no longer exist,” she says, laughing. “And I love the heckling.”

Hugo’s athletic career brought her many things, but she says the most important lesson was about the power of the team.

“That was the life lesson,” she says. “And that’s how I look at the school. We need each other and the team to bring it all together to be successful.”

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