Hilo boosters disband An important part of implementing a grand plan for your program is to figure out who is with you and who is against you.
out of frustration
The founder of the Vulcan
Boosters Club puts out a call
to action to the UH systemBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comCount the Vulcan Boosters Club against Hilo athletic director Kathleen McNally's long-range plan.
Harvey Tajiri, a former member of the Hawaii County Council and state House of Representatives, announced Friday that his organization would be disbanding after the school year and 32 seasons of service to the university. He cited a lack of communication with McNally and dwindling funds from the University of Hawaii system.
And he says the club is not coming back unless promises turn into action, and quickly.
"I don't know that we ever can put the boosters back together," Tajiri said. "Everything (the universities) have done has been rhetoric, all talk and promises with no action. We don't see anything except for rhetoric. We (Hawaii-Hilo) have been struggling for funding since the inception. We have very little in the way of scholarships, 40-something. I think even the Manoa band has more than that."
Tajiri created the club in 1970 and returned to take the helm at the beginning of this school year. The changes he and his fellow members on the board of directors have seen over that span is what convinced them it was time to give up the fight. When they gave up, McNally considered it a loss.
"It has me upset. Anything that is so traditional disbanding is too bad," McNally said. "But I see it as an indication of the depth of the budgeting problems that the university as a whole -- every component -- faces."
The school has gone from more than 70 tuition waivers 10 years ago to the just more than 40 it currently has. McNally says that the economy and poor attendance during the recent basketball season and at the annual Big Island Invitational caused her to temporarily take textbooks out of her athletes' tuition waivers to offset the money lost.
Tajiri charges that she has overspent her budget by 100 percent, even though basketball attendance increased by an average of 315 fans over the previous year. An average of 968 people attended games last season.
Tajiri says another sign that the school was going in the wrong direction came when McNally told the group not to bother with its annual spring fund-raiser, and that she would handle it herself.
McNally, who told the Star-Bulletin last week that she hopes to take the NCAA Division II program to Division I, says it was the group's apprehension to change and a reluctance to adapt to a different strategy that killed the group's fund-raiser this year.
"It wasn't that I didn't want them involved," McNally said. "It was that I wanted them to do something different. I wanted them to help me with the community, to focus on a ticket drive instead of straight donations. I don't think we have done a good job of getting families to the events, of building the ohana, and that is what I wanted them to focus on."
Another point of contention is McNally's availability to the booster club. She says that she has attended roughly 80 percent of its weekly meetings, while Tajiri claims that she has only attended three -- and left two of them early. She and Hilo chancellor Rose Tseng met with the group as late as last Wednesday, an encounter Tseng described as positive.
"I am quite surprised," Tseng said. "I don't know where this comes from. The last thing Kathy (McNally) told them was 'I will work with you.' "
Tseng, who is the bridge between the boosters and her athletic director, said she will be meeting with them soon and hopes that she can find out what the problem is and iron it out. She believes that their falling out may be nothing more than a lack of communication.
"They are good friends and good people," Tseng said about the club. "I appreciate their sincerity in trying to help and I know in their hearts they want to help the university. We have had a lot of support from the community for years and it is not going to just end."
For all that Tajiri and McNally disagree on, they agree on one thing: Hilo is in trouble and it won't be out of trouble until the funding it gets from the University of Hawaii system returns to the amount it once was, if not higher.
"She was behind the eight ball before she got here, we can't only blame the athletic director," Tajiri said. "By the same token, up until now, we really had the support of the athletic administration, now nothing is being done. She just doesn't see fit to meet with us to see what we can do with what little we get from the system."
Tajiri has done his part to solve the problem by donating money through fund-raisers, offering scholarships and hiring a publicity firm to promote the school. McNally counts among her accomplishments equality in all sports and a real concern for her student-athletes.
"She cares about everyone, and I think that's wonderful," said Sharon Peterson, the Hilo volleyball coach of 25 years. "For all the years I've been here, she has done a great job of making sure every single athlete in every single sport is taken care of."
The Vulcan Boosters Club is one of many at the university, but is the largest and most influential in the community. As powerful as it is though,, McNally wants to move on because she has other important things to worry about.
In order to stay at Division II, she will have to add one women's sport and one more championship, all with a budget that struggles to support the nine sports Hilo currently fields. And she has to do so while her school is under the microscope of new UH president Evan Dobelle, who is still evaluating how the system runs at every level.
But that is where McNally thinks she has made some strides, making the people who control her program's fate stand up and take notice of the assets her student-athletes possess.
"We have worked really hard to make athletics visible," McNally said. "And I think we have been successful. Four wins over Manoa (in baseball) and one win away from going to regionals (in basketball), that just isn't supposed to happen with our budget. We almost blew it wide open this year.
"I really believe I can make a difference," McNally said. "My only mission here is to raise awareness of the special gifts our student-athletes have. It's a shame that nobody knows what is happening in the program because they don't ask. We have potential doctors and lawyers here."
UH-Hilo Athletics
