Dave Reardon: Luis, Miller were role models, barrier breakers

May 5—1/1

Swipe or click to see more

GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARADVERTISER.COM / 2022

Honolulu Star-Advertiser sportswriters Ann Miller and Cindy Luis stood next to the statue of Donnis Thompson at the Stan Sheriff Center on Sept. 2, 2022.

Select an option below to continue reading this premium story.

Already a Honolulu Star-Advertiser subscriber? to continue reading.

Get unlimited access

From as low as $12.95 /mo.

At what most people think of as the back of the Stan Sheriff Center, there's a parking lot that leads to what is called a security entrance. It is also where other people who work at the games enter and check in.

A quick left turn takes you to a corridor, where the first door on the right opens to a place called the green room. It is used for postgame interviews, and is where reporters on deadline write as quickly as they can, these days for an online post, and still, in some cases, the next day's newspaper.

Cindy Luis and Ann Miller are among the class being inducted today into the University of Hawaii's Sports Circle of Honor. Like the press box at Murakami Stadium is now rightfully named for the iconic sportscasters Jim Leahey and Don Robbs, I wondered if the same might be done in honor of Ann and Cindy someday at the Sheriff Center. They wrote thousands of stories from there, and thousands more from Klum Gym, the Blaisdell Arena, Aloha Stadium, countless golf courses and tennis courts and anywhere else sports were played in Hawaii since the early 1980s — and don't forget those volleyball national championships and other assignments on the continent.

After something Cindy told me, I am now certain that green room name should be changed.

"I actually have it in my will that I want to make sure there's always food and drink in the media room, so I will have money set aside for that," she said.

It kind of sounds like a joke, but if you know Cindy, you know that's something she'd really do. Hopefully, there are many, many more years before her promise becomes reality.

This Circle of Honor class means more than any of the others to me, and this might be the case even if Ann and Cindy — two of the best sportswriters I've ever known and worked with and people who helped me in so many ways — were not in it.

Jim Kalili was one of the first in the long succession of great linemen to come out of UH. The 2010 World Series softball team is up there as one of my all-time favorites in any Hawaii sport, along with the 2007 football team coached by June Jones, who is also a member of this year's class.

I make sure the students in a sports media class at UH learn about the rich history of their school's athletic programs. And, for several reasons, that 2010 softball team is always part of a lesson plan. There's no better way to learn how to write a breaking game story than via the dramatic walk-off home run that Jenna Rodriguez hit at Alabama to send the Wahine to the World Series — and then, for the follow-up story, writing through with a quote from their coach, the always colorful and accommodating Bob Coolen.

Of course, there's also the drama of the 2007 come-from-behind victory over Washington that went down to the final seconds and got the Warriors into the Sugar Bowl, and many others by teams coached by Jones and others in many sports at UH.

Cindy recommended me for the teaching job five years ago when she no longer had time to do it. It's the second time she played a huge role in my life's work with a timely opportunity; she was the sports editor at the Star-Bulletin who hired me to come back from Florida in 1999. If not for that I might still be on the continent wishing I were home in Hawaii.

Ann has also always been very supportive for decades. That thing about knowing who your real friends are during the toughest times is true, and she is a perfect example of that for me. I think I still owe her about a hundred rides from the years when I couldn't afford a car — and, even now, advice any time I ask, about anything, that is always right on the mark.

Ann and Cindy are often described as role models for girls and young women interested in working in sports media. Well, that's not the complete story, because they are examples for anyone, regardless of gender. Among many other things, I always envied their calm on deadline, and marveled at how they wrote with the rare combination of accuracy, clarity and color. If you couldn't be at the game, their stories took you there; if you didn't understand it, their prose explained it — day after day after day, year after year after year.

Yes, it's natural talent and work ethic, but they both refused to accept "no" when that's what women who wanted to work as sports reporters were told by almost everyone who made hiring decisions. In the '70s, the aggressions were macro.

Thankfully that wasn't the case at the Honolulu papers around 45 years ago, and Ann and Cindy landed here after gaining experience in, among other places, Oakland and Guam.

In 2010, when we all worked together for a while at the newly formed Honolulu Star-Advertiser, I asked our then editor, Paul Arnett, what it was like to have the two best volleyball writers in the country on one staff. One of the interesting things about that is it wasn't the first sport for either while growing up.

Ann's dad, Gene, put a tennis racket in her 3-year-old hand, and she lettered in four sports at El Cerrito High School in California, then softball at San Francisco State, while covering high school sports on the weekends for the Oakland Tribune.

Her mother, June, and older brothers Ken and Gary were supportive, too.

Volleyball was one of her high school sports, and she also knew the game from a coach's perspective because of a P.E. class in college.

"I played it, but I'd never seen anyone watching people play volleyball (before Hawaii)," she said. "Maybe a few parents, but that doesn't count."

Cindy's main sport as an athlete was basketball, but she grew up loving them all, especially baseball and football. Her dad, Joe, was a commercial fisherman who was often away for work. But he made sure she and her brother, Mario, had season tickets for the Chargers. Her mom, Pearl, and aunties and cousins would go, too.

She still has a trophy for being the top girl athlete at University High School in San Diego, where she was on the varsity basketball team all four years, starting for three; she also started covering sports as a professional for a community newspaper while in high school. Then she went to the best college for anyone in the 1970s to learn more about basketball and volleyball.

"Once, when Bob Nash was coaching UH, a couple of his players questioned my qualifications to cover basketball," Cindy said, and then, with a laugh: "'He told them, 'Hey, you don't know that she played at UCLA?' It's true that I did, but Bob knew that it was intramurals."

Maybe she could've walked on, but she was too busy writing for the Daily Bruin.