Until he got an academic scholarship to the University of Hawaii, Kona Moran had no true sense of how much college life would mean to him and his future. Until he was allowed to walk on the Rainbows’ basketball team,
Until he got an academic scholarship to the University of Hawaii, Kona Moran had no true sense of how much college life would mean to him and his future. Until he was allowed to walk on the Rainbows’ basketball team, he said he didn’t understand how the excitement and motivation he would draw from participating in intercollegiate athletics would stay with him the rest of his life.
When he’s asked why he wanted to be involved with the athletic booster club at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, the answer comes rolling out almost before you can finish asking the question.
“It took me a while to realize,” said Moran, the incoming president of the Vulcan Boosters Club, “but looking back, it’s almost embarrassing to not have realized it immediately, or at least sooner — the impact and support I received through sports, the disciplines involved, the meaning of being part of a team and the support I’ve received my whole life from the community?
“It finally dawned on me that virtually everything I have, whatever level of achievement I’ve attained professionally, personally, whatever, it all gets back to my involvement with athletics. I finally realized, like 100 percent realized, how much I have to and want to and probably need to give back to the community.”
He might have traveled the country end to end, up and down and back again and not found a more worthwhile place for someone genuinely interested in helping to fortify and strengthen a collegiate athletic program operating on subsistence level financing.
“We’ve been successful here before,” said the Oahu native, “and we can do it again. How good can we be? I can’t answer that question but I want to find out and I know one thing for an absolute fact: if we do nothing and expect to benefit the school that means so much to the Big Island, we will fail.
“We have to roll up our sleeves and get involved,” he said.
A Realtor in Hilo, Moran isn’t a dreamer, he’s a doer. He talks about waking up every day knowing unless he goes and gets some work done, he won’t make a dime. Realtors aren’t on salary, they’re more like professional bowlers, golfers or tennis players. You want to make some money? Go do your job and be successful.
To that end, Moran determined the Vulcans boosters needed to expand, needed more pathways deeper into the community. You know what happens to untrod pathways here; if you leave them alone long enough, they are overtaken, they return to the wild, out of sight, out of mind.
At a recent board meeting, Moran challenged seven members of the group, you could call it the Thousand Dollar Challenge, even if he doesn’t.
“There’s a lot of heavy lifting we have to do,” Moran said, “and you get better results with more people, you lighten everyone’s load while you strengthen the group.”
So he challenged them to each find 10 new members willing to pay $100 to be a booster club member and join the effort to fund raise for Vulcans athletics. The challenge was that anyone who couldn’t come up with 10 new members would make up the difference out of their own pocket. If you only bring in seven, you pay the extra $300.
“Everybody raised their hand,” Moran said, “they were all in.”
Once the base is expanded, the real work of staring down fiscal challenges begins. He is aware that athletic scholarships at UHH fall far below NCAA maximums. It’s one thing to spend more in travel than any other school you compete against, it’s another to carry that burden and compete against those schools who might have twice as many scholarship athletes.
Could the Vulcan boosters raise enough money to fully fund athletic scholarships, giving UHH teams a better chance to compete for championships?
“It’s an interesting concept,” Moran said. “I don’t know enough about finances of the university, how the money is distributed and all the rest, but I intend to learn and I want to be a part of the solution.”
Fund raising happens at all schools, but Moran envisions a more robust, community-wide approach necessary to effect any change. He wants to create a big deal for Vulcans athletics.
“We have ideas and we want more ideas, we want these new people we intend to recruit to bring their ideas,” he said. “We are planning tailgate parties, UHH coaches talking story with us, and it needs to be capped off with a major, community-wide gala of some kind that we’re still formalizing.”
His belief in the potential stems from things he learned growing up in Hawaii.
“Here, when you say, ‘Let’s get everyone in the canoe and work on all of us pulling together, like a team, like one connected group that understands the destination,’ people really understand that,” he said. “We learned it when we were all little, it’s a connection we allow ourselves to get away from as we get older, but it’s one that works, really well, if we just make up our minds to do it.”
He’s done that, he just needs more people grabbing paddles.
Contact Bart at barttribuneherald@gmail.com]
