The American Volleyball Coaches Association released its Top 25 Preseason Poll yesterday. It looks an awful lot like Hawai'i's early-season schedule.

The Rainbow Wahine are ranked seventh in their sport's major poll. They play No. 25 (Santa Clara) and No. 9 (UCLA) the first week of the season, Nos. 20, 2 and 6 (St. Louis, Texas and Cal) the second week and No. 5 (Stanford) the third. They chase that with a doubleheader against Pepperdine, first among "Others Receiving Votes," Sept. 18 and 19.

Hawai'i's opener is Aug. 28 against Western Michigan in the Chevron Rainbow Wahine Invitational. Western Michigan is the only unranked opponent the first two weeks of the season, and it also received votes.

"We knew it was going to be tough, but we didn't know it would be this tough," UH coach Dave Shoji said. "We'll just have to see how tough we are.

"I had this feeling a few years ago and we came out of it fine. We'll be OK no matter what. Two or three years ago (2007) we had a really bad loss against Michigan to start the season and we recovered. The first weekend will be difficult, but I think we'll be ready and respond. If we don't, we'll put our helmets on and go back out the next week. No matter what happens win-loss wise, we'll learn for the second weekend."

Penn State, with five starters back from a team that won its second straight NCAA Championship in December, is ranked No. 1 in the preseason, with 52 of the 60 first-place votes. Texas received six first-place votes and Washington, ranked No. 4, the other two. Nebraska is ranked third.

New Mexico State is the only other Western Athletic Conference team that got votes, coming in 31st.

In other volleyball news:

• Hawai'i high school seniors Juliana Behrens and Sarah Palmer, who both play for the ASICS Rainbow club team, are among 383 players from 37 states on the early "Watch List" for the Under Armour Girls' High School All-America team.

Behrens is a 6-foot-1 hitter at Punahou and Palmer a 5-11 hitter at Hawai'i Baptist. Palmer has verbally committed to Texas for 2010 and she is projected as a libero.

The Watch List is the starting point for the Under Armour All-America selection process. In November, AVCA will name 48 student-athletes as an Under Armour All-American, with 24 on the first team and 24 on the second.

The first team will be invited to play in the Under Armour All-America Volleyball Match and Skills Competition. It will be Dec. 20 at St. Pete Times Forum, in Tampa, Fla., in conjunction with the NCAA final four and AVCA convention.

• The Rainbow Wahine will be playing on new Taraflex flooring this season. The old Taraflex court, which was Hawai'i's first, was a gift from Team USA in 1995, after an exhibition match here. The court was already several years old when UH received it.

The new court was donated by Chevron and shipped here — twice. Some of the original pieces were short and had to be replaced. The correct ones were shipped in from France at a cost of $13,000 to the manufacturer.

The new court looks like maple flooring and has dark green trim. Graphic art/logos will be applied here.

Taraflex is a synthetic floor covering, with vinyl on top of a reinforced fiberglass and foam backing. It is supposed to be safer, allowing good grip and shock absorption, which reduces stress on joints from impact.

• With Shoji on the verge of becoming the second women's volleyball coach to get 1,000 victories (he starts the season with 984), UH is conducting a "Serving Up 1,000" fundraiser. The school will try to gather 1,000 donations to match Shoji's victories. Those who make the tax-deductible gifts will have a paper volleyball with their name displayed on the Stan Sheriff Center concourse. For more information, go to the link on http://www.hawaiiathletics.com or call the athletics department.

• The U.S. Men's Junior National Team, with three players from Hawai'i, finished eighth at the recent FIVB Men's Junior World Championships in India. Team USA, which advanced to the top eight by two-thousandths of a point over Belarus on an FIVB tiebreaker, went 2-6. Brazil won the title. The Hawai'i players were Brad Lawson ('Iolani '08) and Erik Shoji (Punahou '08), who are Stanford teammates, and Tri Bourne (Academy of the Pacific '07), who plays for USC.