The most famous, and successful approach to the first 100 days on an important new job may have been uttered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the occasion of his election to President in 1933, when the nation was in the grips of a threatening economic collapse.
He set the tone early, gave people hope and motivation for a better future when he spoke into a microphone on a national radio broadcast, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”
Along came the New Deal, economic recovery and many of the financial structures that allowed the United States to grow into the global power it has become.
Pat Guillen passed the first 100 day mark over the weekend in his new post as the athletic director at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and we can report there were no catchy slogans or lofty promises to quickly relieve the school of its latent issues that ranging from travel to recruit to facilities, all tied together by thread of financing.
Time will tell, as it has with those who preceded him, whether he can whittle away at those concerns in order to fill his vision for the department, but it may be a good thing that, 100 days later, Guillen hasn’t been sideswiped by something he didn’t see coming.
“Nothing really out of left field,” he said last week, “I think I did some pretty good due diligence before I ever applied for the job. I remain convinced that this is a place full of opportunity and if anything, I’m even more excited about it now than I was back in August (before he started).”
Guillen found it encouraging at a Board of Regents meeting two weeks ago on Oahu, that the Board was interested in how the basketball floor is doing, given a history of issues centering on its installation over concrete in a moisture-laden atmosphere. At times, it can seem more an ice rink than a basketball and volleyball surface.
Tearing up the floor — originally intended for student use, not NCAA competition — for a complete replacement, isn’t in the budget, and that’s the case with almost everything that needs to be done at the school to get facilities to a respectable level similar to those other 13 schools in the Pacific West Conference.
The school has what was intended to be a useful field for its two soccer teams, but the field has no drainage and can’t be used even for practice much of the time. Somewhere along the way somebody didn’t care enough install a proper field or tried to do it on the cheap and hope nobody would notice.
It sits below a well-done softball field with fencing, dugouts, seating and a scoreboard. But the soccer program, which involves more players than any other sport at the school, are forced to play on the outfield of the baseball facility, which also can’t be used much because of the rainy weather.
“It’s going to take some work,” Guillen said of the soccer situation, “but we are looking at the possibilities of putting in adequate drainage or maybe trying to purchase artificial turf, but that’s real expensive.”
It always comes back to money, and the need for some visionary, long-term fund raising concepts, but that’s off in the distance for Guillen and, on the subject of soccer, coaches universally loathe artificial fields because of the way it changes the game as balls skip and bounced differently than on grass. Digging up the field, installing proper drainage would surely work, but it requires money as well.
If he could find a developer that wants to invest in a small complex that could support the two soccer teams and high school football on the East Side, Guillen would hit the jackpot, but nobody has been breaking down his door to offer such a proposal and Guillen isn’t going around with his hand out.
He said he is asking for more in the state supplemental budget, a routine request, but the funding for UHH comes from a budget that originated when the Vulcans played in the seven-team PWC, which is now 14 schools large and that means more travel to California.
“I’m still in the evaluation and assessment phase,” Guillen said. “Fund raising is absolutely necessary here but it is also difficult and I see my role now — this first year — as building up relationships, developing them, understanding where people are; I think that’s going to work better in the long run than meeting people who don’t me for the first time and asking them for money.
“I need to earn the trust of the community and the staff,” he said. “I didn’t some here to be mediocre, I didn’t come here to use this as a way to get another job, I don’t another job, I want to retire here with a successful athletic department that reflects the community and brings it pride.”
These things don’t happen in 100 days, much less overnight. The road is long, the journey is steep, the path treacherous in spots along the way and every step is costly.
