By Amy Shipley

Before they taught their teammates one word, facial expression or body movement associated with the tribal dance known as the Haka, they looked each man in the eye and demanded an answer: Would you stand on the pool deck before an NCAA swim meet and put your whole heart and soul into this?

Every last swimmer on the University of Hawaii men’s roster told native Hawaiians Ilia Reyes and Davis Kane, yes.

And so, after practices under head coach Victor Wales in preparation for the team’s Oct. 9 opener at California, swimmers gather under the direction of Reyes and Kane for a very different sort of instruction. It started merely with memorizing strange-sounding words and learning the proper accents. Now, the team is putting in the dance moves.

“It’s all out or nothing,” Kane said. “We explained to them, it’s not something you fool around with. It’s serious.”

Reyes and Kane expect to unveil the dance as soon as the team can perform it expertly, possibly before a senior meet at home on Oct. 16. New Zealand’s rugby team, the All Blacks, has long performed the Haka, which descends from New Zealand’s Maori tribe and is known as the Ha’a in its Hawaiian form. Hawaii’s football team has used it previously.

The intention was to bring a piece of Polynesian culture to the diverse Hawaii swim team, which features athletes from as far afield as Romania and Italy, while also revving up the squad that was the runner-up last season in Conference USA.

What effect it will have on opposing teams when the swimmers stand shirtless and in warm-up pants on the pool deck, yelling and pounding out the 45-second routine, is anyone’s guess.

“It may psyche them out,” Reyes said. “They may say, ‘What are you saying? What are you yelling? What are you doing?’ But it’s not meant for them. It’s meant for us.”

Reyes, who is from the island of Molokai, and Kane, from Maui, went to the same high school in O’ahu, and both were state champions in the 50-yard freestyle. At the Kamehameha School, they interacted with a boarding student from New Zealand, who not only taught them the Haka, but also instilled in them a deep reverence for it.

Doing it properly involves uttering cries and grunts, stomping the feet rhythmically and forcefully, slapping the arms and hands, and making facial gestures.

“I told [my teammates], ‘I’m not going to teach it to you if you’re not willing to go all out for it,” Reyes said. “I had like five-minute conversations with everybody… [some guys said], ‘I don’t want to look stupid.’ … I said, ‘You have to commit to this. If one person doesn’t want to do it, no one does it. It’s all out or nothing.’”

The instruction began slowly. Reyes and Kane decided not to teach any dance moves until their teammates had mastered the chant. There are a number of versions of it; the one the All Blacks made famous is considered a war dance.

“We went over every single vowel, one-by-one until everybody got it,” Reyes said. “We had the whole translation for them … [We] went over the whole history lesson with them. We wanted to make sure they understand where the culture comes from.”

Wales, the coach, loved the idea from the start. Reyes and Kane are among only a handful of native Hawaiians on the team. The San Francisco-born Wales knew it was important for his athletes to walk away from the university with more than memories of hard workouts and fun in the sun. Last year, Reyes and Kane taught the team a Hawaiian chant. The Haka sounded like the perfect next step.

“What do [the swimmers] really know about Hawaii?” Wales said. “What do they know about its culture? Yeah, the ocean’s warm and the weather’s great, but what about the bigger picture, the history of it?”

It won’t be performed, Kane said, until it has been perfected. So far, the Warriors have only executed it from start to finish one time. That performance, off to the side of the practice pool after a workout, surprised everyone.

“It looked cool when we all did it together,” Kane said. “It gave everyone chicken skin. It brought us all a lot closer.”

Tags: NCAA

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.