Two Pearl City players dove desperately for a dig. They didn’t get the ball and they collided hard into each other on the way to the floor.
The Chargers’ P-Jay Solomon stayed down longer and appeared to be more hurt than teammate Jordan Florita.
At first, it looked as though Solomon would shake it off and return to action in the OIA Division II boys volleyball championship game against Castle. But he kept looking at his arm while being attended to by trainers and then he stood up.
That’s when it was obvious to those in attendance that his forearm didn’t look right. Instead of being straight, it was shaped more like an S, obviously broken.
Trainers attended to Solomon and he walked out of the Radford gym on his own power. If he was feeling pain, he didn’t show it.
Teammate Garrett Kamanu, who led the Chargers with 17 kills, saw a little bit of pain emanating from Solomon’s face on his way out, but not the physical kind.
“He saw his parents in the stands and I saw him starting to cry and I know he felt like he disappointed them,” Kamanu said about Solomon. “He wasn’t crying because of his arm. He played great, so he shouldn’t be hanging his head.”
Pearl City coach Brennan Velasco said the pain is likely to be more intense later.
“I broke my leg once and at first didn’t feel the pain because the adrenaline was flowing,” he said. “When the doctors reset it, the pain was a lot worse.”
Solomon and Florita collided while trying to get a cross-court smash by Castle’s Kekoa Pili-Rumusod, who had 12 kills in the four-set victory. The Knights took a 21-20 lead in the fourth set on that play and the Chargers never recovered.
Solomon, a senior, had four kills and a block before going to a hospital. There was no official word, but it is unlikely he will play when Pearl City makes an appearance in the upcoming D-II state tournament.
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