Nagamine saddened by tourney cancellation

College soccer seasons go by pretty quickly. From a team’s perspective, you have to make every game count to put yourself in position for the postseason. From a spectator’s perspective, you have a finite number of chances to catch a team at home, especially when you consider that in the Big West play there are only four home games per team.

Hawaii had two of its 11 home dates lopped off on Tuesday morning, as the Rainbow Wahine Soccer Invitational — featuring UH, Arizona State and Montana — was canceled due to the approaching Hurricane Lane.

More specifically, the tournament was a no-go when Montana and ASU informed UH they would not be flying out to the islands because of the dangerous storm.

UH coach Michele Nagamine found out this morning and UH put out an official announcement around noon.

“We were at the mercy of the teams who were traveling in,” she said. “And they both decided that they weren’t going to come into a possible dangerous situation, and they notified us of that.”

The tournament was set to be played Wednesday (UH vs. Montana), Friday (UH vs. ASU) and Sunday (Montana vs. ASU). Apparently, Montana and ASU will now play a game somewhere on the mainland.

“We’ve all been tracking the hurricane and watching the weather updates, and I think most people thought that the game on Wednesday would be playable, but as we got into the weekend, the Friday-Sunday games, it could get a little hairier with the wind and the rain,” Nagamine said.

The UH coaches sat down with the players in the team lounge and let them know the situation.

“I think they’re disappointed. They were very, very excited to play,” Nagamine said. “Even though it would have been our third game in less than a week, they were excited to kind of continue our momentum from last week, this past Sunday’s game (a 1-0 overtime win over Bowling Green), into this week. I think Montana is a team that’s building under a new coach. Arizona State … the coach is in his second year and they have a quality side and some pretty dynamic players. It was going to be two good games for us this weekend. Of course, one of them (Wednesday vs. Montana) was going to be on TV, so that was also very unfortunate.”

It was one of four games set to be televised by Spectrum Sports this season.

Possibly what hurt the most is a couple of chances were lost for a very young team to gain experience prior to the games that matter most — conference play.

Now UH hunkers down for the storm while preparing for its Northern California road trip to Saint Mary’s and Pacific next week.

“I think the way we’re spinning it and looking at it for our team, I have to think that things happen for a reason,” Nagamine said. “We have a very intimate roster, this would have been a very taxing week for us, as far as body and recovery. The stress for the bodies we were going to put with two good opponents. But you know, we’re rolling with it and although we know these games would have helped us to prepare, it does give us a little bit more time to recover. And we’ll come back strong against two opponents next week against Saint Mary’s and University of the Pacific. Being able to stay in Northern Cal and get two really good games, we’re really looking forward to that.

“This may end up helping us preserve our bodies a little bit longer, but at the end of the day we’re so disappointed that we don’t get to play the games.”