I am Hawaii's best kept secret in sports, but the Rainbow Wahine are a close second.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: The Rainbow Wahine volleyball team is good. Really, really good.

But I won't launch into my usual hyperbolic stream of superlatives, because the Rainbow Wahine aren't that kind of team.

They don't have a Kim Willoughby.

They don't have a Tee Williams.

They don't leave your jaw on the floor with effortless feats of athleticism (the occasional Amber Kauffman jump notwithstanding. In fact, I think Amber might be the reason they say white men can't jump, not white people. Because that girl can fly). They just play good volleyball. Really, really good volleyball.

I watched the 2009 Rainbow Wahine play for the first time last Friday and was astounded at the way Dave Shoji's squad worked together as a team. They had a hand in front of every Pepperdine kill attempt (I say attempt because Pepperdine only converted 38 of 126 hits, which translates to a kill percentage hovering between .120 and hide-the-women-and-children awful). On the rare occasion Pepperdine managed to hit a ball past the formidable UH block, the Wahine had a player in perfect position to make a dig.

The Wahine served well.

They set well.

They passed well.

The only thing they didn't do well was extend the game long enough for me to drink a second beer.

(On that note, I don't know if it's a Wahine Volleyball thing, a general volleyball thing, a reflection of the current down state of the economy, or my complete inability to remember how much beer used to cost, but beer prices were about a dollar or two cheaper on Friday than I remembered at Stan Sherrif Center events. Whatever the reason, this made me a happy. Really, really happy. Jim Donovan, I salute you!)

The only question left in my mind about the Wahine after Friday night's utter dismissal of an incredibly talented opponent was, why haven't I heard more about this team?

Sports media tends to focus on the style over substance. Chad How-stupid-do-you-have-to-be-to-change-your-name-to-a-grammatically-incorrect-Spanish-word Ochocinco's impromptu Lambeau Leap replayed two hundred times on Sportscenter with nary a mention that the Cincinnati offensive line somehow blocked well enough for Cedric I-most-likely-gained-four-pounds-since-you-started-reading-this Benson to rush for 140 yards.

(I think it's probably in my best interest to stop using the hyphenated word jokes before I receive a slew of emails calling me Justin single-handedly-ruined-a-literary-device D'Olier.)

Because of this myopic obsession with flash and pizazz, we tend to overlook simple excellence. And that's a shame.

The primary goal of team sports is to seamlessly integrate a group of individuals into a unit whose collective talent and ability far exceeds their individual skills. And the 2009 Rainbow Wahine have a lot of individual skill.

Aneli Cubi-Otineru hits the ball so hard you think it's going to pop.

Brittany Hewitt and Amber Kauffman form an impenetrable wall up front.

Kanani Danielson has more athleticism than you would ever imagine could fit in a 5' 10" frame.

And Jayme Lee is just so cute, you want to give her a hug. (Seriously. She's looks like she could fit in your pocket. If she wore wings, you'd swear Tinkerbell was playing librero. It's awesome.)

But the way the girls work together on the court is truly something special. They achieve a level of harmony and unity not seen in a UH uniform since a certain record setting Quarterback was tossing touchdown passes to guys in dreds.

The 2009 Rainbow Wahine don't just talk about playing as a team, they truly embrace the concept. It's about time we started embracing them.