Before Dave Shoji had a full-time job, his Rainbow Wahine volleyball team had sold out Blaisdell Center, won a national championship and was on the verge of winning two more. As he waits to tee off on his 35th year as Hawai'i's head coach he is about to become the second in his profession to get 1,000 victories, after UCLA's Andy Banachowski.

It has been a long, breathless blur of a ride for a state captivated by a sport that rarely makes a ripple across most of the country.

Shoji, 62, has won four national titles. He is also the only coach in collegiate volleyball whose program makes money — as much as $500,000 some years.

All of it makes this quiet, unassuming and hyper-competitive guy a valuable commodity in his sport and, especially, in Hawai'i.

Just don't ask him how it happened.

He was hired as the part-time head coach in 1975, a year after Alan Kang started the program and guided it to a third-place national finish. Shoji knew the program had potential, but UH had no idea what its 28-year-old coach would accomplish, with the help of the late Donnis Thompson, the women's athletic director that hired him.

Thompson was adamant about beginning the 1976 season at Blaisdell Center, which held about 5,500 more than Hawai'i's humid little Klum Gym home. No one else thought it was a good idea, including Shoji.

"We had no following," he recalled. "It was all Donnis Thompson. She must have been selling tickets door-to-door. There was no reason we should have drawn 7,500 that night. We weren't popular. I really think she gave away tickets, to be honest, or paid people to come. But how do you get so many people to come? OK, we finished third in the national championship two years in a row. Does that get 7,500 people in the Blaisdell. Still, to this day, I just can't believe that happened."

Shoji is why it keeps happening. The Rainbow Wahine have led the country in attendance since they moved into spacious Stan Sheriff Center in 1994, and won much more than they have lost. Shoji's .850 winning percentage (984-173) is also second-best among NCAA Division I women's coaches — to Russ Rose, of Penn State. He has developed some 40 All-Americans, was Coach of the NCAA's 25th Anniversary Team, is one of USA Volleyball's all-time Greatest Coaches and was inducted into the Hawai'i Sports Hall of Fame.

He took the job initially because, "At 28, I was still basically unemployed. I was just trying to pay the rent and move out of my parents' home." UH paid him $2,000 and he held two other jobs. In 1981, he became the first full-time coach in the women's department.

He wouldn't have a multi-year contract for another decade or so. "Maybe around then I started thinking I could do this the rest of my life," Shoji said.

His plan all along was to become a PE teacher, but there were no jobs available. Back in the mid-70s, when Title IX was just starting to cure college volleyball of its Southern California-cult status, Shoji's background gave him instant coaching "cred."

He played here as a kid and soaked up everything he saw at Outrigger Canoe Club like a sponge. He was a two-time All-American at UC Santa Barbara, where his analytical nature transformed him into something of a player/coach from his setting position. His military service consisted of playing volleyball and giving teammates orders around the world. He coached Kalani High School when he came back home, until Thompson offered him the two grand.

"When I took the job, probably just from being around volleyball all my life ... I was probably ahead of 95 percent of the coaches out there," Shoji said. "Andy and (UCSB's) Kathy (Gregory) were there when I started. We were competing against coaches that were PE teachers at their colleges. There wasn't a high level of expertise in our sport at that time."

That has changed dramatically. There are more than 300 Division I teams now, second only to women's basketball. The quantity and quality of good players is "probably 50 times what it was back when I started."

Hawai'i rarely gets the best recruits, but it has grabbed more than its share of the next-best. Shoji has shown the ability to make the most of what he gets, whether it is a raw middle blocker like Suzanne Eagye or Juliana Sanders, or an undersized project with a will to win and a passion for the game, like Cheryl Grimm, Missy Yomes, Mahina Eleneki, Tita Ahuna, Toni Nishida, Joselyn Robins and Nohea Tano.

"We've been fortunate to get a combination of great athleticism and great volleyball players," Shoji said. "They are not always the same person. We have developed players. They are usually way better when they leave than when they came. That's not always the case with other players around the country. We've taken players that are not high school All-Americans, but have the potential to be college All-Americans."

Comparing players of different eras is impossible, but Shoji is sure someone like Diane Sebastian, his first elite Mainland recruit, and Deitre Collins, Teee Williams, Robyn Ah Mow, Kim Willoughby, Lily Kahumoku, Kanoe Kamana'o, Heather Bown and Angelica Ljungquist could play anytime, for anyone.

What people will probably remember most about Shoji is his seemingly innate ability to coach a match. Certainly his players do. Three decades later Sebastian — now Diane Pestolesi — remembers Shoji calling time six points into a match.

"What struck me was one, why did he call it so soon?" Pestolesi said. "And two, after it ended he had just told us the other team is doing this and this and this ... it was such a long list. I remember thinking, 'You've got to be kidding. Who sees all that in six points?' Are you kidding me?"

Collins, recently named San Diego State coach, recalls another surreal moment she believes defines Shoji's wisdom.

"When he put Lee Ann (Pestana) in at game point (in an NCAA final) and she hadn't played the whole tournament ... he didn't hesitate," Collins said. "He knew us and knew what we could do and made subs at the right time. He understands the game really, really well — beyond what most of us can even fathom as a coach.

"That's pretty special."

It is what Shoji will miss most when he eventually retires — and even he doesn't know when that will be. He will also miss the "interaction with the team," which has created a lifetime of friendships for his family.

Shoji finds being honored as one who shaped the Hawai'i sports landscape since statehood "very humbling for someone that really didn't have any aspirations of being an influential person."

His family might be among the last to know about it. "They," Shoji said, "will probably have to read it in the paper."