Darold Imanaka had another idea.

He wanted to kick off his girls' basketball team's season like a big name college squad. Instead of "Midnight Madness" he would stage "Midday Madness" during Kalani High School's Friday assembly period. He would get a buddy to hit up Meadow Gold for free ice cream and give the students a chance to make fun of the faculty, recruited to act as shamelessly antagonistic yell leaders. Good fun.

This in pursuit of his dream to fill Kalani's gym to overflowing, to recapture the giddy glory days of Kalani basketball, when Imanaka was a teenager on the court and the crowds were so loud the players could barely hear themselves win.

He's had a lot of these schemes: theme nights at the games, grand giveaways at halftime including TVs and a trip to Vegas and making nice to the band to get them to play at the girls' events. In each endeavor, the parents gamely show up and the girls happily play their hearts out.

But as happens with the best-laid plans, the bell schedule got changed. Now his audience would not be a captive one, but had to be lured away from lunch recess.

Imanaka turned it into a lesson for his players. "I told the girls, this is like in life when something unexpected happens to jam you up. What are you gonna do about it?"

Players and teachers set out across campus to rustle up an audience and though the gym wasn't filled, it was full. More than that, it was ebullient. The cool kids even removed one ear bud to hear the laughter on the court.

Parents who were able to break away from work came to watch their daughters play. Yale Alama ate his Subway sandwich and beamed at his daughter. Last season, Alama only saw Violet play on a DVD sent to him during his tour of duty in Iraq. This season, he will enjoy every second of being in the bleachers.

Turned out the teachers didn't want to just cheer on the sidelines. They wanted to take on the squad. The crowd let out a big "ho!" when 6-foot-3, 320-pound faculty member Matt Kuresa thundered on to the floor. At 6 feet 2, senior transfer Allison Neussl could look him in the eye, but her arms were lithe birds compared to his tattooed weaponry. That only added to the show. The referees, decked out in shirts that said "Three Blind Mice," were wonderfully crooked. Good fun.

Imanaka insists that none of this is really about basketball, even though his team won the division II championship last year and Kalani's team, known to be small but scrappy, has been suddenly gifted with four players at 5 feet 11 and above.

"I won't know if I'm successful until 10 years down the road," he says. "The goal is to create good citizens. Basketball is irrelevant."

But when basketball takes a village, reawakens old-school school spirit and has Mainland college coaches calling, it is powerfully relevant.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.