By DONALD O. STRANEY
By DONALD O. STRANEY
For the Tribune-Herald
Editor’s note: University of Hawaii at Hilo chancellor Donald O. Straney is writing a guest column on the state of Vulcans athletics.
Sixty-five years ago, with support from the community, the University of Hawaii at Hilo Center, the precursor to UH-Hilo, started what was to become a very successful athletics program.
From humble beginnings with the formation of a basketball team in 1949, we now have 12 sports teams.
In the coming year, we will enter a new phase for our athletics program: We’ll begin searching for a new athletic director, and we’ll be building the case for continued support for the program.
The responsibility to ensure we have a positive impact will be an important part of the duties of our next permanent athletic director. I will begin a search to fill that position in January, and I look forward to hiring someone who can work effectively with athletes, coaches and the community.
I remain committed to strengthening the UH-Hilo athletics program. We will need help from the community to find the resources to do this.
Whether it is help with sponsorships, raising scholarship funds, or attending our games, we depend on community support to make intercollegiate athletics available to Hawaii student-athletes.
In return, UH-Hilo must ensure our athletics program energizes the community with “home team pride,” whether in youth sports programs, community service, or providing exciting games that will spark an interest in college sports among our budding athletes.
Athletics is an important part of UH-Hilo. Participation in sports provides student-athletes with structure and motivation that helps with their studies.
In nine of our 12 sports, our student-athletes stick with their academic program as well as, or better than, students not in athletics.
Participation in intercollegiate athletics also helps student-athletes build lasting relationships with their coaches, teammates, and the youth and supporters in our community. They develop important life skills, such as teamwork, leadership, discipline, and a balanced approach to competition, that will benefit them long after graduation.
While the benefits of intercollegiate athletics are clear, the costs of maintaining an athletics program—scholarships, coaches and staff salaries, travel, equipment, facilities, and the like—present challenges for any university.
These financial challenges are exacerbated at UH-Hilo by the fact every one of our games requires airplane flights, and often hotel stays, for us or our opponents.
In contrast, most schools on the mainland are able to reduce their travel costs by using surface transportation to attend a significant number of their competitions.
At UH-Hilo, more than 70 percent of our athletics budget is for travel.
In spite of reductions and restrictions in state funding, we provide $2.6 million in resources to support our athletics program. All but one other school of the 13 in our conference are private schools that fund their programs significantly higher than we can.
The past two years we did not enroll as many students as we expected, reducing the tuition available to support all of our programs. We are operating on a bare-bones budget that stretches our coaches’ ingenuity to the limit.
Yet, even with financial challenges, we continue to recruit excellent coaches who see at UH-Hilo the opportunity to develop vibrant programs. In turn, the coaches are recruiting talented players.
Both men’s and women’s golf teams this year won their conference championship and the men’s team placed 13th national championship—with teams entirely composed of student golfers from Hawaii.
Our local athletes benefit from the experience of playing with teammates from the mainland or from other countries.
To that end, last year I authorized out-of-state tuition waivers, worth an additional 10 percent of the athletics budget, to help in recruiting and in building competitive teams. We will continue to raise funds from corporate sponsors and donors to provide additional scholarships and operating funds.
In a very promising move, the UH Board of Regents submitted to the governor a request to increase UH-Hilo’s athletics budget by $600,000 to offset the costs associated with maintaining the gender balance of our program. We will seek funding support from legislature in the upcoming session.
With the continued support of our community, the talent of our student-athletes, the abilities of our coaches, and the commitment of our campus, together we can continue strengthening and building the UH Hilo athletics program in the spirit of our forebears.
Go Vulcans!