By: Kevin Hashiro

For Brandi Yarnell, patience was indeed a virtue as her desire to become a Chaminade Silversword was like a winding road, taking her from her home in Windward O‘ahu to the Midwest United States to Laie, O‘ahu and finally to the slopes of Kalaepohaku.
 
Yarnell was a standout prep athlete at Kailua High School in Windward O‘ahu playing both varsity basketball and softball. It was on the diamond that she excelled as a centerfielder, helping the Surfriders capture the Hawai‘i High School Athletic Association softball title as a senior in 1995 as well as runner-up finishes in ’92 ad ’94. After garnering first team O‘ahu Interscholastic Association and all-state honors as a senior, Yarnell was off to Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
 
But a year later, Yarnell wanted to return home to help care for her ailing father, who attended CUH in the late-60s to early-70s and recommended that she go there. After contacting the coaching staff, she was offered a softball scholarship and her journey back home was on its way – at least that’s what she thought.
 
“At the same time, my good friend and high school teammate, Anuhea Kekauoha also attended Benedictine and made plans to return home to play for BYU-Hawai‘i,” Yarnell recalled. “She was an outfielder as well.”
 
But the Chaminade softball coaching staff mistook Kekauoha for Yarnell, resulting from her scholarship being pulled and given away. Yarnell said she never received a confirmation call from the coaches and only found out when she made a courtesy call to update them on her progress.
 
“I was so bummed, disappointed and upset,” she said. “(I was) offered a spot for me to walk on and a chance for a scholarship for the next year. But I couldn’t afford the tuition nor did I want to play for a coach who didn’t have the decency to call me himself.”
 
But BYUH did have a scholarship available and offered it to Yarnell which she accepted. But the week before the fall semester began in 1997, the Seasiders coach abruptly resigned. BYUH also trudged through a losing season in ’98 and the long drives from Kailua to Laie six days a week also wore on her.
 
Yarnell then got a second chance to attend Chaminade when her friend Allison Nihei took over the Silverswords’ head coaching position in the fall of 1998. Yarnell knew this was her opportunity so she decided to transfer to Chaminade in time for the spring 1999 season.
 
“As soon as I stepped on campus, I knew that I had made the right decision,” Yarnell said. “I loved the atmosphere, the staff, my classmates, my teammates and the feel of the classrooms and campus. It was a perfect fit for me.”
 
Due to Pacific West Conference transfer rules within the league, Yarnell was not eligible to play that season and again had to wait before she could step on the diamond as a Silversword, sitting out as a redshirt. But that didn’t stop her enthusiasm, attending the team’s games and cheering them on.
 
Finally, in the spring of 2000 and three years after she initially wanted to play for Chaminade, Yarnell finally put on a royal blue and white uniform, getting the start on Opening Day in centerfield. Along with several other transfers to the team, including Kekauoha and Christine Pasuca from Division I Hawai‘i-Manoa, the ’Swords with their blend of local and Mainland talent made a push up the PacWest standings.
 
Heading down the stretch of the season, the Silverswords and Hawai‘i Pacific were neck-and-neck for the PacWest’s Pacific Division crown. In the season’s final doubleheader on April 30, 2000, Chaminade only needed one win in Kaneohe to clinch the title, but a seventh-inning grand slam in Game 1 ended those dreams, giving the division to HPU, which also won the second game for good measure.
 
But it didn’t take away from a winning season for the Silverswords, which finished the year 23-22 and 11-9 in the PacWest. “Our team was pretty scrappy that year and it helped that we all got along well and really loved the game,” Yarnell said. “We made the best with what of what we were blessed with. No one really complained. We just showed up and played hard!”
 
Yarnell completed her eligibility after the 2001 season and earned her Bachelor’s degree in the Spring of ’01 in Psychology. She tried several professions including being a fourth-grade teacher and a treatment counselor.
 
But for Yarnell, whose paternal grandfather, father and older brother were police officers, it was probably no surprise that law enforcement eventually entered the picture. “It seemed to be in my bloodline,” she said.
 
Now an 11-year veteran with the Honolulu Police Department, Yarnell is involved in the Human Resources Division at HPD, investigating EEO complaints within the division and assists with drug testing HPD personnel. She admits that her role in her department can be stressful particularly when it comes to assisting family members with funerals of current or retired officers and employees. But the rewarding part “is that we help our department to honor those who have dedicated themselves to the community and to HPD.”
 

She also notes all the good things that being an officer in HPD entails other than being on patrol. Some of the examples that she cites include: Being involved in the community with the DARE program and Police Activity League (PAL) with sports programs and the Junior Police Officer program; training to patrol beaches and outdoors on All-Terrain Vehicles and Segways; be an investigator; work in Specialized Services with the Bomb Squad, SWAT, K9 team and helicopter units; fight the war on drugs in the Narcotics Vice Division.
 
“The list of opportunities at HPD goes on and on,” Yarnell said. “Where else can you drastically change job titles and assignments without having to leave your career? Being a police officer means you have to be a counselor, leader, enforcer, protector, negotiator, mediator, coach, supervisor and so on. We wear many hats and that’s what I love about this job and being with HPD.”
 
Sometimes the role also includes some acting. Many viewers who have tuned into Oceanic Time Warner Cable’s high school sports channel, OC16, have seen Yarnell and some of her fellow officers who have played collegiate sports locally in an HPD recruiting commercial. She is seen throwing a softball in the commercial. And obviously, her friends, co-workers and former softball teammates had some fun at her expense.
 
“I got a lot of ribbing for it,” she joked. “Some critiqued and joked about my catching and throwing technique in the commercial. A lot of people didn’t realize that in the commercial shoot, I had to throw the softball to our SHOPO president, Teneri Ma‘afala, who was standing off-camera and he didn’t have a glove, so I couldn’t throw as I normally would,” she laughed.
 
“The message we were trying to convey was that, ‘Hey, police officers are normal human beings such as former collegiate athletes and we wanted to inspire people, especially women, to apply. We wanted people to relate to it and possibly get them to think that, ‘Hey, I remember her, I played with or against her, I can do that too!’”
 
Even years later, Yarnell still has fond memories of Chaminade, both academically and athletically. In the classroom, she was involved in the McNair Scholars Program the summer before her senior year, which helped to prepare attendees to complete a grad school level thesis research paper.
 
“Dr. (Bryan) Man (Chaminade’s current Faculty Athletics Representative) was my mentor that summer and I learned so much from him,” she said. “I completed a research paper on student-athletes and later that year, I presented it in a conference which was held in Las Vegas. That trip was fun!”
 
She also was an ambassador for Chaminade during the Maui Invitational with several fellow students, helping to escort the booster club members from the other schools to and from their games. “The talent was amazing and being able to get court-side seats for every game was awesome,” she said about the 2000 field that included tournament champion and eventual NCAA runner-up Arizona, Final Four participant Maryland,  as well as UCLA, Louisville and Connecticut. “I even got to meet Magic Johnson and a bunch of NBA scouts. It was a trip I will never forget.”
 
In the spring of 2014, the Chaminade softball program hosted an alumnae game at Palolo District Field in Palolo Valley, the first such contest for the program in several years. Yarnell was there and saw teammates she hadn’t seen in years and despite not getting to play, it brought back fond memories of being on the Palolo diamond, which served as a practice field and game field for her team.
 
“Even though it has been about 13 years since I last played there, it was if I had never left,” she said. “We all had a great time joking around and talking stories as if time had never lapsed. I think we hung out at the field long after the game was done and talked story into the early evening.”
 
She also recalled the friendships she made and how the team then had to push through of even the simple things they lacked.
 

“We didn’t have a lot of fancy equipment or sponsorships,” Yarnell recalled. “We had to buy a lot of things on our own, but we were happy and enjoyed playing the game we loved.”
 
The Chaminade softball program then had similar challenges as the current team has today, mainly the lack of a true home field. In addition to Palolo District Park, Yarnell’s teams also practiced at Koko Head District Park near Hawai‘i Kai and Cartwright Field in Makiki with Cartwright serving as the team’s field on game days while today’s team still practices at Palolo and also at Wilson Park in Kahala while calling Patsy T. Mink Central O‘ahu Regional Park in Waipahu home.
 
But the moxie of both eras is the same in that the softball programs stood up to the setbacks and battled through the adversity. “Driving back and forth to different fields daily was tiring but we still pushed through and played hard when it was game time,” she said.
 
Today, Yarnell spends her down time with her children, Boston (6) and Brooklyn (3), “who keep me very busy. My weeknights consist of helping my kids with their homework and weekends filled with soccer games and family get-togethers.”
 

She also enjoys off-time with the family at the beach, having movie nights at home and vacationing at Aulani Resorts, Disneyland and attending San Diego Charger football games. She also enjoys what Hawai‘i residents typically do – going to Vegas with family some of her former Chaminade teammates.