Let's see now: Dave Shoji opens his record 35th season as the University of Hawai'i women's volleyball coach tonight.

He will get his 1,000th career victory with the Rainbow Wahine sometime in the course of this season and probably at the Stan Sheriff Center, which celebrates its 15th anniversary in October, to boot.

So, yes, you could say this will certainly be a season of milestones for Shoji and the Rainbow Wahine.

Shoji has another interpretation: "It just means I've been here a long time."

OK, there's that, too.

When the appropriate time comes, the 62-year-old Shoji will, no doubt, beam proudly and celebrate in a manner befitting the remarkable accomplishments. In the interim, he's deep into the coachspeak of "taking 'em one night at a time," beginning with Western Michigan tonight in the 7 o'clock game of the Chevron Rainbow Wahine Invitational.

Small wonder, really. For all the numbers Shoji figures to be part of this season — and he's 16 wins short of 1,000 (984-173-1) — you get the feeling the one he's most got his eye on (next to a fifth national championship, of course) is an NCAA final four appearance.

That is a worthy goal and embraceable challenge for these seventh-ranked Rainbow Wahine as the 2009 campaign opens. "A benchmark" accomplishment, as Shoji terms it. Getting to one would be something of a breakthrough, too. Not since 2003, when the Rainbow Wahine were knocked out by Florida, has UH crashed a final four.

Back then we figured the next one — and the shot at a national championship that comes with it — would be just around the corner. Indeed, once upon a time final fours were almost a birthright for the Rainbow Wahine. They were the yardstick by which UH teams were judged and are still listed, hopefully if not expectantly, on the Rainbow Wahine season schedule.

At one point, from 2000 to 2003, the Rainbow Wahine had managed three in four years. Maybe, with them coming in such rapid succession, we'd begun to take them for granted. No longer, of course. The current five-year drought is the second-longest final four absence in the program's history.

The hope is that the current edition of the Rainbow Wahine will be the group that returns UH to one. In this case, Tampa, Fla., Dec. 17 to 19.

Now, that would put an exclamation point on what will be a year of milestones at UH.