Let’s Go Bows!
Melody Toth
Watermark, 237pp, $16.95

Sportswriting is a genre that seems to ignore the notion that journalism is meant to be impartial. Whereas most reporting at least attempts to affect some modicum of objectivity, the sports page is overrun by opinions, rants, slander, bias, editorializing, sentimentality and outright apoplectic rage. The only detachment a reader is likely to find in the sports section is in the box scores (and in this age of steroids even those formerly solid statistics are debatable).

It’s not only partiality that is rampant on the sports page; readers are also likely to find numerous hoary cliches, once believed to have been killed off by myriad style guides and copy editors, that take up residence in sports writers’ paragraphs and propagate. A few choice and oft-used examples: “There’s always next year,” “S/he played with a great deal of heart,” “Did x win the game, or did y lose the game?” (The latter can often be heard tumbling from the mouths of former athletes turned seedy television analysts, and is possessed of such circular logic that it almost reads like one of Zeno’s paradoxes.)

Occasionally an author with literary pretensions will attempt to redeem the genre, often by churning out some piece of writing that employs sports as a metaphor for some larger concern. The results are sometimes breathtaking–e.g. the works of Bissinger, Halberstam, Liebling, Plimpton, and Swidey to name a few. Still, even the greatest of these works lack the shaggy, informal style of the sports page.

And it is this relaxed quality that makes the sports page, even with all of its perceived deficiencies, such a joy to read. Sports fans are not after objectivity. We want our beliefs affirmed, and if that is not possible, we want a cogent argument to rail against. We accept the dusty old saws in which sports writers traffic because we recognize the truth behind them, and because their aphorisms so often serve as a palliative. (How often has the aforementioned “there’s always next year” been spoken by some long-suffering fan following yet another late season collapse?) We want the indignation, the sentimentality, the creaky jokes, the unmitigated joy, because, when we watch sports, that is our experience. The best sports writing exists as a wide-ranging, loud, funny, sometimes profane, conversation between writers and readers.

With her new book, Let’s Go Bows!, Melody Toth joins the conversation.

Toth, who spent 30 years as an athletic trainer at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa, is not a prose stylist. Her writing is nostalgic and filled with unabashed boosterism for the program, athletic directors, coaches and players she worked for. But that hardly matters, because Toth’s book is also invested with a great deal of charm and spirit. One would have to possess a hard heart not to be won over by this effusive book.

The back cover of Let’s Go Bows! promises inside stories, but don’t be fooled by that phrase’s salacious connotations. Toth isn’t interested in muckraking. Her inside information has more to do with training schedules, the terrible drag of travel and the excitement of game night. When Toth chooses to single out a coach or a player, it is for admiration. Dave Shoji, Riley Wallace, Bob Coolen, John Nakamura and a host of former athletes receive good-natured profiles. The only institution that takes a ribbing is the Otto Klum Gym, former home of the UH–Manoa Wahine volleyball team, which Toth charitably refers to as a “sauna on a good day.”

Toth occasionally elevates her narrative beyond mere appreciation, especially when she’s recounting particular games or tournaments. In these instances, Toth’s prose takes on a breathless intensity and the reader senses the urgency and thrill of the moment (the chapter on the 1987 NCAA Women’s Volleyball Championship final is especially good). But there are other smaller moments that Toth captures as well–jokes between teammates, watching undersized players play their hardest, comforting a team after a loss–that reveal a community of players, coaches, and assistants, brought together to win and united by their love of competition.

Toth’s book is an unapologetic valentine to UH sports. Once the final page is turned, it’s easy to understand why she loves them so much.

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