It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise last week that popular Hawaii Hilo volleyball coach Tino Reyes was shown the door by athletic director Pat Guillen.
It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise last week that popular Hawaii Hilo volleyball coach Tino Reyes was shown the door by athletic director Pat Guillen.
No, Guillen isn’t trying to clean out the athletic department and replace everyone with associates of his from his time in NCAA athletics in California. Rather, the decision on the direction of the volleyball program is better seen as a snapshot of the vision for the future created out of the leadership team of Guillen and UH-Hilo Chancellor Donald Straney.
There may never have been a two-person team of university president or chancellor and director of athletics that have been universally applauded on every decision they make over the years, so it’s worth pointing out that not everyone in the Big Island volleyball community may agree with Reyes’ departure.
Straney has been a background figure in athletics, or so it has seemed to fans of the Vulcans in Division II athletics. An evolutionary biologist by training, he has been perceived as more of an academics and enrollment leader than as a drum beater for athletics.
It’s probably fair to say neither of those snapshot images are completely accurate, but it’s clear when you talk to him that Straney isn’t ignorant or unconcerned about the Vulcans’ athletic department.
“Athletics is key to our mission,” Straney said last week, “and that means it shouldn’t be separate from the student body. Student-athletes perform better in the classroom on average compared to the rest of the student body, and that comes from the coaches, the discipline they use and the importance they attach to academics.
“So, when I discuss that with the academic side of things here, it tends to get everyone on board because we’re talking about improving the standard of performance for all our students,” he said. “These are some of the people that can become role models on our campus because when other students see them succeed, they realize, ‘That person has practice and games and travel and still finds a way to excel in class, that means I can do it, too.’
“Institutional pride has a lot to do with athletics and that includes its impact on the academic side.”
As involved as he is as a self-described nerd — Straney was a high school varsity tennis player before he took the deep dive into zoology — he is a little like the duck gliding effortlessly across the water. You may not see Straney hanging out at the athletic department quad, he may not be in attendance at every game, but like that duck, whose feet are paddling like crazy under the surface, the chancellor is plugged in to athletics through Guillen.
It’s a team approach Straney didn’t have when he started at UH-Hilo in 2010. Athletic department leadership was in flux. One AD left, interim leaders filled the void, trying to insure the basics got accomplished without the ability to make long range plans. Guillen’s hire gave Straney his teammate. They discuss plans and procedures for improvement, a lot.
Straney has Guillen working on a plan to finally rebuild the soccer field that was improperly installed with no drainage, and the school has scheduled a complete do-over for the improperly installed floor in the school gym, which doesn’t have the proper subsurface and can squeeze out water like a sponge.
“Pat has made good headway on both of those and it underscores the necessity to do things right the first time,” Straney said. “The gym floor was something we thought we might have gotten done before volleyball (season), but we couldn’t get it scheduled in time. It will get done.”
Another part of the athletic department that has an aching need is soccer, where former Vulcan Gene Okamura just finished the first season as an interim “soccer director” after Lance Thompson left for jobs in Arizona. UH-Hilo is one of the few programs left in the Pacific West Conference that assigns one coach to both teams.
“Yes,” Straney said, “we are working to get that second coach, my hope is that we can find (the money) in the existing budget, but I’m also aware that the hardest part of these situations is finding the right fit.”
Straney was told that made it sound like the key to a second coach in soccer isn’t finding the money to pay for it, the bigger issue is trying to find the right coach.
“It’s true,” he said, “in any situation that involves a key role like that, the toughest thing is always to find the right person.”
Does that mean soccer could have two coaches in place for the 2017 season?
“It would be really good if we could do that,” Straney said.
That means, if you try to call Guillen and the phone is busy, he might be working on interviews for a second soccer coach and a new coach for the volleyball team.
For a school whose competitive issues are more extreme than any other school in the NCAA given its island location, there is some level of comfort in knowing the two heads at the top of the school’s food chain are collaborating.
No other school in the country requires airline costs must be figured into every game played in any sport, so the way forward is not clear. There is no guidebook to flip through and learn how other schools with travel costs that take up about 72 percent of the budget make it work — nobody else has to deal with it.
The way forward is filled with blind corners, dead ends and trying to achieve parity with heavy travel baggage the others don’t have. Straney and Guillen are from the mainland with island sensibilities, each of them determined to enable a higher level of competitiveness.
We don’t get to watch them work, but we will all notice the decisions they make.
The future of Vulcan athletics, from playing surfaces to coaches and scholarships is on the drawing board, pieces are being moved, the vision is starting to take shape.
Stay tuned.