Call me a homer.
If presenting real-world issues faced by coaches with losing records at the University of Hawaii at Hilo equates that way, to some, so be it.
It doesn’t feel like being a homer when you scratch a line in the sand for these Vulcans’ coaches, because the term is meant to represent the act of inappropriate praise for those who have all they need to compete — facilities, budgets, athletes — and still come up short.
But this is the Big Island. In Hilo, a losing record cannot be fairly judged the same way as everywhere else in college athletics. At a distinctly underfunded school like UHH, administrators and others can’t even expect to get nonpareil applications when they open up a job search for a coach.
Have there been cases when the school hired a coach that was being courted by another school? Maybe, at some point in time, but that was a long time ago.
Institutionally, you are what you are. When administrators make sour faces over a string of losses, they would be well-served to recall where the coaches came from, what they’ve been given to compete and who they have on the roster.
Consider men’s basketball coach GE Coleman, who recently concluded his fourth season at the school — his first head coaching job — with a 38-64 record.
It’s not good, but is that bad? Compared to what? You can’t make a feasible judgment without stepping in a little closer and looking inside.
If this were Azusa Pacific, Cal Baptist, or any of the other fully funded California schools in the Pacific West Conference, a reasonable assessment would ask why a coach with Coleman’s record is still employed. For fully funded programs at Division II or Division I, four years is plenty of time to make a determination on the direction of the program.
Here, the record may only be a glimpse at the path a program is on and it’s fair to say Coleman has improved this program. When he got here, he had a couple leftovers from a program that had a very bad year and lost a good coach — it happens, even in good programs — and he had a few weeks to assemble a roster among the players no school in the country wanted, long after the recruiting season ended.
In his time, Coleman started to build a roster after that first year. He lost a talented player to a pro contract, an eventuality that devastates a program like UHH while it causes little more than a ripple at fully funded schools. His third team had a chance to make the conference tournament on its last game of the season, but fell short against Azusa Pacific.
With Randan Berinobis, Brian Ishola, Ryley Callaghan and Eric Wattree returning, Coleman has a nucleus that could start for most teams in the conference, something he’s not previously had.
Just now, he’s signing players like 6-foot-8 Denhym Brooke from New Zealand, transferring from BYU-Hawaii, which dropped athletics. Brooke was second in the conference in blocked shots last year, and UHH was dead last in blocked shots, with only 43, 10 fewer than the next lowest total.
The building blocks are beginning to stack up, even if the construction may not be obvious from the outside. Coleman secured signatures from Will Burghart, a 5-10 guard and two-time All-State player from Mark Morris High School in Longview, Wa., and Devin Johsnon, a 6-6 shot blocker from Lower Columbia Community College, also in Washington.
He’s close to a couple others whose names can’t yet be released yet because of NCAA regulations, but the point is, these newcomers will be joining a returning group that has more experience and ability than any Vulcans’ squad in the last several years.
Will it be enough to get into the conference tournament? Does the coach’s job ride on the upcoming season? One would think it’s on the mind at a place that terminated a popular local volleyball coach after seven years with a record about the same as several other of the coaching records in the department. The school went to the extent of breaking down the record of the terminated coach, highlighting his worst seasons, driving a narrative that the program had turned in the wrong direction.
“I don’t think about that stuff,” Coleman said. “I have a lot to do, especially now, and I learned a long time ago not to worry about things over which I have no control; this is one of those.
“I’ve been in successful programs (at Central Washington, he was a top assistant on a team that made four consecutive regional tournament appearances), and I have enough confidence in myself to believe that we can get there, but it isn’t something you sit around and dream about. My job is about controlling the things I can, getting better each and every day and that goes for me as well as my players.”
Getting better is especially critical now because the school is without an assistant coach when it couldn’t find the resources to retain Mark McLaughlin, who lost his $15,000 a year job helping in game management. His assistant coach’s salary of $15,000 doesn’t pay the bills, so now Coleman is trying to bolster both the coaching staff and the playing roster, all at once.
At other places, coaches often know of assistants employed elsewhere and they can often sweeten the deal and bring in someone they know and trust.
Not here.
Two years ago, Coleman had the perfect combination in Kalani Silva, a local guy who dabbled in real estate and had a CPA license, so his hours were freed up. Silva graduated from Seattle Pacific, giving him a clear understanding of the difficult spot the Vulcans find themselves with regard to recruiting.
Unfortunately for UHH, Silva moved to Oahu, where his son is now attending St. Louis school.
“I can’t say enough about Kalani, we had the best of both worlds,” Coleman said. “A local guy who knows the game, knows how to teach, and had the job-related flexibility to join us.
“There’s a lot of people who want to coach,” he said, “but when you ask if they can be in our practices from noon to 3 p.m. every day of the week and then be a ready for a 10- to 13-day road trip, the list of candidates drops off right away.”
This is a Big Island university, a Hilo school, and those roots have to be seriously considered by the people doing the hiring. We are different here, different from the cookie-cutter mold prescribed by the cartel that runs college athletics.
That doesn’t mean every hire needs to be a Big Island native, it means that hires need to “get it,” they need to grasp how to fit in.
Coleman is in discussion with potential assistants, locals with insight and ability, so you can pump the brakes on sending in those applications. If he can get the right person, it will bring a level of local credence to the program that will be a balm working against the financial forces constantly threatening to break apart the athletic department.
You wonder how they do it sometimes at UHH, but in these situations, you wish them well and hope for the best because you always respect coaches who get programs headed in the right direction without the funding and facilities to support of the competition.
Forget New York.
If they can make it here, these coaches can truly make it anywhere, even if it take a little more time.
