join warm-up now or to leave. I told him that I would wait until I could talk to the team. He then continued yelling at me, accusing me of having “quit a long time ago”. Reyes kept asking me to leave. There would be no “hard feelings”. After I asked him directly if he meant what he was saying I saw no other way out of this humiliating situation than to leave the gym.

For me, my Rainbow career was over. I felt terrible when I was thinking of my teammates and how I Was leaving them. But did I have a choice? ‘Wow’, I thought when I was at home. ‘Who would have expected that it would end like this?’ Coming back here in fall of last year I would have predicted anything but this.

After a call from a teammate and another one from Reyes in which he said everything was just a matter of”miscommunication” I decided that I would finish the season in the only possible manner: I would have to avoid any but the absolutely necessary contact with the coaching staff. And let me point out one thing: Mr. Wilton did not bother to call me. Until today he hasn’t apologized for what happened. As a matter of fact he said in a team meeting after my leave that he doesn’t regret it at all. He had also appointed three other players as team captains. Three! If you’ve never heard of anything like that: neither have I.

The following weeks were very hard for me as I had to put up with a coaching staff that I had lost all respect for. I also decided that I would not talk about the incidence until the end of the season because I did not want to cause more trouble than there was already. As a result I had to witness Wilton humiliate me even more by leading the public to the belief that he had acted correctly. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin read like this: “The junior middle had walked out of practice Wednesday after being told by Wilton to ‘either give it all you got or leave,’ said the coach; Breuer made the flight with the team that night.’ Telling only parts of the truth is not the truth.

After reading about this incidence one could think: ‘Seems it was ugly, so what?’ A coach cannot always make everyone happy. I agree. Unfortunately my personal encounter with Wilton was only one of many that led to problems throughout the whole season. Days before this Wednesday Mike Wilton stopped practice and yelled at Dejan Mildinovic to either jump every single time for a quick attack or lie would send him “back to Serbia to fight”.

Many people don’t see it but ask any former player and he will confirm it: Mike Wilton is not a good volleyball coach. Itis true that he was the coach when UH men’s volleyball got
extremely popular after the Special Events Arena opened. But it was Yuval Katz who was the reason for it, not Mike Wilton