At last!  The Winter Olympics are almost here. Opening ceremonies take place this Friday.  Once every four years we are treated to a festival of the world’s best athletes on snow and ice. I know we had the Summer Olympics in Beijing two years ago, but I’m one of those people who enjoy the Winter Olympics more.

It’s smaller and cozier, and it has all that snow and ice, cool stuff we don’t see living in Hawaii. Before the show begins this week in Vancouver, I’m feeling nostalgic for the 2006 Winter Olympics from Turin. Here’s what I wrote then about some of the nice-on-ice highlights, including some lessons for writers.

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Richie’s wife, Noelle, was the one who began asking a series of questions about the Colts and their no-huddle offense, and while Richie was patiently explaining to her how it works, and why Peyton Manning was dancing around before the play and shouting things and gesturing to his teammates like crazy, that’s when I got this brilliant idea that writers can have their own no-huddle approach to writing. At least I think it might be brilliant, although I haven’t told anyone about it. Until now.

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The Honolulu Stadium 2010 Calendar features twelve months of memories from Mickey Mantle to Elvis Presley, the Hawaii Islanders to high school football. With rare photos and important dates from Arthur Suehiro’s bestselling book, Honolulu Stadium: Where Hawaii Played, both calendar and book celebrate the golden era of Hawai‘i athletics, a time when Honolulu was young and sport was king.

The Honolulu Stadium 2010 Calendar is currently part of a special promotion at Hawaii Barnes & Noble bookstores: purchase a copy of Honolulu Stadium, the book, and receive a complimentary calendar while supplies last at the three Hawaii Barnes & Noble locations (Ala Moana, Kahala Mall and Lahaina Gateway). The promotional period runs now through October 14, 2009.

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If this story were a romance, it would be longer than Gone With the Wind. If it were a fairy tale, the prince would grow old tracking down the owner of the glass slipper. If it were a life lesson in patience and perseverance, it would be … perfect.

I don’t cry that often, but today I did. After I had been glued to the TV screen for three days, Sunday afternoon brought an emotional reward. When Michelle Wie tapped in a birdie putt on the last hole of the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Guadalajara to win her first LPGA tournament, the tears began. I let them flow.

Michelle is only 20, but this day has been anticipated for … forever.

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Surfing is worldwide, but its roots are in Hawaii. From its island home, the sport has spread internationally in the last one hundred years. As surfing has grown, so has the interest in its history. Bishop Museum Archives in Honolulu holds the largest collection of historic photos in Hawaii. From th [...]
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This past Sunday afternoon my friend Richie from up the street came by to watch our favorite pro team, the Colts, smash the Arizona Cardinals in Week III of the new NFL season (MMIX, I guess … the NFL loves roman numerals). So the Colts are indeed crushing the Cardinals, in Arizona, as predicted. [...]
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Designed to get children acquainted with the different surf moves.  Keikis will progress through a variety of surfing maneuvers  to enhance their understanding of sur [...]
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Cabo & Coral Go Surfing, an inspirational and educational children’s color picture book authored by Del Mar surfer Udo Wahn M.D. and the talented artist Jami Lyn of Encinitas, California. Their approach to the book is not only captivating and entertaining, but it offers the child an opportunit [...]
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To paraphrase Richard Nixon: Let me make one thing perfectly clear — I am not a sports nerd. I’m not. I’m just a regular guy who happens to like sports. I have an actual life. Seriously. Don’t even try to stereotype me as one of those pathetic sports geeks who sleep with their sports almanacs. It’s just that questions like, What was the score of the very first Prep Bowl football game? Who was UH baseball’s first freshman all-American? When was the last time the UH football team shut out an opponent? How many times did “Bobo” Olson fight Sugar Ray Robinson…these things just come to me! Maybe it started when I was a 10-year-old watching UH basketball games on TV. I would list the entire UH roster in my notebook, and then jot down every field goal, free throw and personal foul. Or maybe it began in 1981 when I began tracking stats for every NBA first-round draft pick. This was before the Internet, mind you, so you can imagine how much time I put in to tabulate their points and figure out their scoring averages. So yes, I suppose I have to come clean: I’m a sports nerd. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. ~ Lance Tominaga, author

The Hawaii Sports Trivia Challenge: 1,000 Questions to Test Your Sports IQ! presents 1,000 brain teasers in 100 quick quizzes on the games Islanders play: Rainbow Wahine Volleyball, the Prep Bowl, Little League champs, Hawaii’s Olympians and more. Just released by Watermark Publishing, the 200-page book provides a first-ever source for testing local sports knowledge or settling that friendly wager.

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Head trainer Melody Toth spent 30 years courtside—and behind the scenes—with the Rainbow Wahine, the basketball ’Bows and the other championship teams of University of Hawai‘i athletics. In Let’s Go ’Bows! Behind the Scenes with University of Hawai‘i Sports, she shares insights and inside stories of this remarkable legacy—the world-class athletes, the heartbreaking losses and the heady triumphs of victory on the national stage.

Toth speaks from a point of view that only a few have access to, having spent eight to 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, with the athletes. Her stories, adapted from her journals, reveal what sports writer Ann Miller of The Honolulu Advertiser calls “stolen moments you have never seen and rarely read.” In Let’s Go ’Bows! Toth shares funny and heartwarming stories fans never knew, and recaps some of Hawai‘i sports history’s most beloved and well-known names and games.

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