Pinsoom Tenzing has built the University of Hawai‘i Rainbow Wahine soccer program from the ground up. After establishing the program on the club level, he was hired as the school’s first Division I women’s soccer coach in 1994. In the last 16 years, he has overseen the evolution of Hawai‘i soccer, which has culminated in nearly 140 wins, the school’s first NCAA Tournament appearance, three regular-season conference titles, one conference tournament title and the showcasing of one of the nation’s elite players who has gone on to the highest levels of competition.
Tenzing is the dean of WAC coaches and has now tallied 139 career wins. He has led UH to three WAC regular-season titles, three runner-up finishes and one WAC Tournament championship. Under Tenzing, Hawai‘i has just two losing seasons in the last nine years and has led the team to 10 or more wins seven times.
Tenzing has transformed the Rainbow Wahine from a fledgling program into a formidable squad, both at home and on the road. In 2007, Tenzing led UH to a record-setting season, shattering more than 30 school records, including single-season standards for wins (15), shutouts (12) and goals (59). The Rainbow Wahine made their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament and won their first-ever WAC Tournament title.
In October 2005, Tenzing picked up career win No. 100 with a 2-0 road decision versus San Jose State. At season’s end, he earned long-due recognition with his first WAC Coach of the Year honor. Following the 2007 season, Tenzing earned his second WAC Coach of the Year honor, making it two out of the last three years.
In 2003, Hawai‘i claimed a share of the program’s first-ever regular-season WAC title while winning a then-school record 13 matches. Two years later, the team captured its first outright championship and steamrolled the competition in the process, outscoring its opponents, 16-3, in seven conference matches.
Tenzing certainly has had quality players to do so as years on the recruiting trail have paid dividends. UH has received both regional and national recognition for its recruiting classes with Tenzing luring players from as far away as the East Coast, Canada and Australia. In recent years he has reeled in elite players from California, Florida, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania.
However, it is Tenzing’s emphasis on in-state talent that has been most instrumental. He needed only look in his own backyard to find the program’s greatest recruit, 2001 Kahuku High School graduate Natasha Kai. Kai completed her UH eligibility in 2005 after enjoying an outstanding four-year career. Kai, who was the school’s first-ever All-American and a three-time conference player of the year, was also a semifinalist for the 2004 Hermann Award, given to the nation’s top collegiate player.
Kai left UH as the holder of more than two dozen school and conference records and joined the U.S. national team, the first women’s player from the state of Hawai‘i to hold the distinction. Kai competed in both the the 2007 Women’s World Clup and 2008 Beijing Olympics. She has taken her game to the professional level and in 2009 helped Sky Blue FC capture the Women’s Professional Soccer championship.
Kai is one of a number of local recruits who have starred for UH in recent years, including WAC Offensive Players of the Year Ambree Ako (2007) and Taryn Fukroku (2008) and Defensive Player of the Year Tehane Higa (2007). There were 17 homegrown players on last year’s squad from four different islands.
Keeping the best local prospects at home has been especially crucial for Tenzing, who has always held a firm belief in local soccer talent.Since arriving in the islands in the late 1970s, Tenzing has helped build the Hawai‘i talent pool into a budding soccer hotbed. Tenzing coached extensively in the youth and high school ranks, and even took a 30-year-old-and-over women’s team to a U.S. Soccer Federation national title in 1992.
Perhaps his greatest contribution to the state’s soccer program has been his introduction of the Olympic Development Program to Hawai‘i. Now, besides the more than dozen current Rainbow Wahine players from in-state, many others have had opportunities to play NCAA Division I soccer at schools accross the nation.
Tenzing is a native of Mangan, Sikkim. An all-star soccer and field hockey central midfielder in his prep days, he continued his athletic prowess at the University of Punjab in Chandighar, India.
Tenzing moved to Hawai‘i in the late ’70s where he quickly became involved in the local soccer scene. In addition to coaching a number of local teams, he traveled to the mainland to conduct soccer clinics.
It was at these camps where he made contact with University of San Francisco men’s coach Steve Negoesco. Tenzing became an assistant coach under the most successful coach in NCAA men’s history for two seasons.
After spending a career coaching boy’s and men’s soccer, Tenzing had to switch gears when he took over the women’s program at UH. Molding a women’s club team into a Division I squad was no easy task and while the program would experience some lean years early on, it certainly didn’t show in the school’s inaugural season.
In 1994, Hawai‘i’s first year of NCAA Division I women’s soccer, Tenzing led a team comprised almost completely of in-state players and played an 11-match schedule entirely on the road. That year, they went respectable 5-6-0, with notable wins over Loyola Marymount, USC and Cal State Fullerton.
UH joined the WAC in 1996 and in three years, the program established itself as a legitimate contender. In 1999, the Rainbow Wahine set a then-program record with 12 wins and finished the regular season as conference runner-up. Two years later, Hawai‘i advanced to the WAC Tournament championship before falling to nationally ranked SMU. After another second-place finish in 2002, the breakthrough came a year later in 2003 when UH tallied a school-best 13 wins and shared its first-ever WAC regular-season championship.
As the Rainbow Wahine program has grown, so has the support. Hawai‘i now enjoys a state-of-the-art practice field, and in 2000, moved into the 4,500-seat Waipi‘o Peninsula Soccer Stadium, one of the top collegiate soccer venues in the country. UH has been among the national leaders in attendance since moving to the stadium and in October 2005, a school-record 3,175 attended the team’s regular-season finale versus Fresno State.
Success on the soccer field is only part of the story. Academic excellence has been a hallmark of the program during Tenzing’s tenure. Hawai‘i has been among the conference leaders in scholar-athletes and has had numerous regional and national academic honorees. In 2004, all-WAC midfielder Joelle Sugai joined Noelle Takemoto as the program’s second-ever Academic All-American. In 2006, Taryn Fukuroku and Jessica Domingo were named to the CoSIDA/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District VIII women’s soccer team, marking the fifth time in the last six years that at least one Rainbow Wahine soccer player has been selected academic all-district.
In 2009, UH once again excelled in the classroom, as more than 10 Rainbow Wahine earned all-WAC academic honors, while more than half of the team were named UH scholar-athletes.
