Hawaii’s Taryn Hatcher Covers The NHL; Moanalua Produces Two NFL Raiderettes

Do you have a list of things you try to get to daily?

I do. For home and for work. And now, with COVID-19 putting us in our places, so to speak, the home and the work tasks overlap a lot more than they used to.

One of the great things about having started this BedrockSportsHawaii.com website is I can write about the full and colorful palette of the whole world. In a way, all subjects are possible. It’s kind of freeing from the days when specific sports assignments were the norm and there was little leeway, say, to write about other fascinating subjects.

And tangents. I can go off on tangents more than in the rigid world of newspaper sports journalism.

And so, here’s a tangent — two paragraphs ago, I almost wrote “stuffs” instead of “stuff.” Most people living in Hawaii know that it would be OK. It’s pidgin and acceptable in many cases. It is, also, poor English grammar.

But where were we? Right, getting to write about lots of different things. Let me tell you, story ideas pile up fast and it’s impossible to get to them all and do them all justice.

So instead of letting many ideas float away, I’d like to touch upon some of them here, without writing full-blown stories on each. Ehhh, I recall last summer doing this same sort of thing … calling it “LOT O’ SPORTS SNIPPETS” here at BedrockSportsHawaii.com (formerly NickAbramo.com). That’s when the wonderful professional Alison Koyanagi of Astrategy Marketing mentioned that it would be better to write a story on each one than to jumble them all together. She was 100 percent correct.

But if I don’t get to them in this fashion, I may never get to them at all. Sometimes it’s better to snippet than to completely nip it.

So here goes:

Taryn Hatcher Is Working As TV Hockey Announcer

Former Hawaii News Now sports reporter Taryn Hatcher is a rinkside reporter for Philadelphia Flyers games for NBC Sports Philadelphia.

Hatcher grew up near Philly.

Taryn Hatcher before a Flyers game. (Image credit: SheWritesSports.com and Taryn Hatcher).

“Yes, we were a big sports household growing up,” Hatcher told SheWritesSports.com. “My brother played hockey, so of course, growing up in South Jersey we watched a ton of Flyers. But, my dad played college basketball so we watched plenty of hoops as well, college, NBA, WNBA, all of it. And it goes without saying, I grew up an Eagles, and Phillies fan as well. I feel like that’s just a given for kids who grew up in the greater Philadelphia area, but yes, sports have always been a huge part of my life and certainly shaped plenty of my childhood memories.”

Hatcher, like many of her friends and acquaintances in Hawaii, tweeted on Tuesday that she was looking for any possibility of finding malasadas in the Philly area. That is a big menu item for Hawaii residents on Fat Tuesday, the day before Catholics celebrate Ash Wednesday, the official start of Lent (a time to give up certain luxuries in order to replicate the suffering of Jesus Christ during his 40-day journey into the desert.

Random Mardi Gras question: Anybody know where a girl can get a malasada in the greater Philadelphia area???

(if you don’t know what it is, google it – specifically Leonard’s Bakery Malasadas ?)

— Taryn Hatcher (@TarynNBCS) February 17, 2021

 

Rani Hanohano Is An Awesome Police Officer

One day while at Kamiloiki Park in Hawaii Kai a few months ago, I lost my keys. Couldn’t find them anywhere.

My friend Ryan Downey helped me look for them. We scoured the place right after nightfall and nada. He called the police, and about 10 minutes later, officer Rani Hanohano showed up. She was so super helpful, using her flashlight to check every possible place the keys could be. Still nothing.

But I never imagined that she would care as much as she did about finding those keys and I will always remember it.

It turns out that Hanohano, who grew up on the Westside, is a former volleyball player at Kamehameha and Hawaii Pacific University. She is also a fitness trainer.

Former Kahuku Football Player Nafe In Action At Walmart

Near the Christmas holidays, I was at the customer service desk at the Mililani Walmart. In front of me, I saw three young men who were having a louder than usual conversation.

Two of the people, apparently in their 20s, were kind of laughing or smirking about something. I thought they all knew each other. One of the guys was more heavy set.

Less than a minute after I walked in, two of the men all of a sudden bolted for the door, with the heavier guy chasing after them, unsuccessfully. One of the guys running out stepped on my foot.

It turns out, the big guy was Nafe, a security guard. He told me his last name, but I have since forgotten it. I asked him if he used to play football and he told me he was a lineman for the Kahuku Red Raiders back in the day.

It turns out the two who ran were alleged thieves and Nafe had been calmly detaining them with conversation. Nafe later told me that it’s not his job to apprehend them or use force to physically detain them.

Before talking to Nafe, I asked the customer service people what was going on and let them know my foot got stepped on, not that it hurt, but that it was irritating and uncomfortable watching people suddenly run away like that.

Afterward, Nafe made sure to ask if I was all right. I told him he would make a good police officer some day, like Rani Hanohano.

Two Former Moanalua Students Are Raiderettes

Hawaii’s Monica Davantes and Meghan Kourtney are Las Vegas Raiders cheerleaders. Both are former cheerleaders at Moanalua High.

And both are also busy with full-time jobs. Davantes is a digital media assistant and Kourtney is a flight attendant.

Raiderette Monica Davantes
(Image credit: Raiders.com)

Raiderette Meghan Kourtney.
(Image credit: Raiders.com)