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Sports Watch
KENNETH Mortimer's resignation as president of the University of Hawaii yesterday comes as no surprise, except perhaps the timing of its announcement. Mortimer’s timing
was a surpriseHe and his wife, Lorraine, bought a home last summer in Bellingham, Wash., where he was president of Western Washington University before coming here. So one knew that his retirement was imminent.
Mortimer made known more than a year ago that this was his last presidency at a university.
His final day as UH's 11th president will be July 1, 2001 -- two years before his term was to expire. But he will remain until a successor is found.
I've personally known five presidents at UH - my alma mater - and I can say that none was more enthusiastic in following the Rainbow athletic teams than Mortimer.
He doesn't merely attend Rainbow football games. He watches practice, goes to team meetings, talks to the players.
Volleyball and basketball games at Stan Sheriff Center? He's there in the front row, watching the Rainbow men and Wahine in action.
Yesterday, hours after announcing his resignation, Mortimer flew to Hilo to throw out the first pitch in a historic baseball game between the Rainbows and the UH-Hilo Vulcans.
The two teams might have previously met 96 times, but it's a historic meeting because it's the first time they're playing each other in a Western Athletic Conference game.
MORTIMER'S presence is a gesture that Les Murakami and Joey Estrella -- baseball coaches for the Rainbows and Vulcans, respectively -- fully appreciate.
Their series playing out a losing WAC season is one merely of pride and nothing else. But it's nice to know that your school president cares enough to be in attendance.
"He's a good president. He's very supportive of all of the sports at the university," said Rainbow men's basketball coach Riley Wallace.
"He's made himself available to talk to the kids we're trying to recruit. And the good thing about him as an administrator, is that he doesn't micro-manage," Wallace said.
Wallace and Mortimer once had a run-in when football coach Bob Wagner was fired.
"It was one incident. That was it," Wallace said. Like the professionals that they are, it never went beyond that.
Mortimer, who lettered in high school football, basketball and track, sees the Rainbow student-athletes as a great source of pride for the university and the community.
More important, he views athletic programs as playing an important part in the overall student experience at UH.
MORTIMER'S greatest UH athletic legacy came in June, 1994 when, as head of the WAC Council of Presidents, he got his peers to agree to end Hawaii's obligation to pay travel subsidies when the league expanded to 16 teams.
From when it joined the WAC in 1979 until the 1996-97 season, it had been a league requirement for UH to foot the travel bill for visiting WAC teams.
Never mind that UH traveled more than any other WAC team with an airfare bill totaling $1 million a year.
Mortimer saw that it wasn't fair and that Hawaii was hardly an equal partner.
"It's his legacy to the university," said Marilyn Moniz-Kahoohanohano, assistant athletic director and head of women's sports, at the time.
It's still true today.
Whether that legacy can remain in effect remains to be seen.
For now, though, it's still in place, all thanks to Kenneth Mortimer.
Bill Kwon has been writing about
sports for the Star-Bulletin since 1959.