No time to waste for new AD
| • | Frazier era under way at UH |
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer
Bounding out of an elevator, while slinging one bag over a shoulder and tucking another under an arm, Herman Frazier was now a man on the move.
Striding against the flow of tourists heading toward the beach, where the morning sun was peeking through the clouds, the former Olympic track medalist set a quick, determined pace through the lobby of his Waikiki hotel.
Breaking stride only to acknowledge the "Good luck, Mr. Frazier!" wishes of a bell desk staff for whom he has become a familiar, transient figure over recent weeks, Frazier was a man in purposeful hurry.
After 43 days of being the University of Hawai'i athletic director in waiting, the time between his selection and when he actually picked up the reins yesterday, Frazier was not in a mood to wait any longer than necessary.
"You'll find I don't like to waste time," Frazier said as he hustled aboard the van that would take him to UH to fulfill Day One of a three-year contract. "I like to get right to it." Indeed, on this day, patience would be a virtue saved for another time.
A 6 a.m. congratulatory phone call from the East Coast had awakened him, quickly stirring him to the welcome import of the day. But the realization that a new era was coming for both he and the athletic department had fully come the day before. "It hit me when I looked at that one-way ticket," Frazier said. "Then, I knew."
As he rode through traffic, staring ahead with an are-we-there-yet look, the 47-year-old Frazier said he had a while ago left behind whatever butterflies he might have felt, necessarily focusing on what would be a whirlwind day of meeting and greeting.
"I'm probably more anxious than nervous right now," Frazier said. "It's finally time to get going and I can't wait," he would say as the van entered the lower campus gate and he took note of Les Murakami Stadium and the football and soccer practice fields.
After talking with UH administrators and staffers via a cell phone for the better part of the last few weeks while wrapping up loose ends at Alabama-Birmingham and conducting U.S. Olympic Committee business, Frazier said he had come to "feel like" the AD even if he had yet to take possession of the keys to his office and discard the tag of "AD designate."
But "feeling like" the AD his new business cards proclaimed him to be and assuming actual hands-on control were two different sensations. Frazier would come to appreciate the difference at 7:54 a.m. when he stepped from the van and straight into the view finder of a newspaper photographer there to document the occasion.
As word of his arrival began to spread through the athletic department, Frazier stopped suddenly just inside the main door and pondered which hallway to take to his office.
Assured of the direction, it had finally come time to settle into the recently refurbished Room 105 of the athletic complex from where all the ADs of UH's quarter century of Division I-A membership, Ray Nagel, Stan Sheriff and, for the last nine-plus years, Hugh Yoshida, had operated before him.
There he would settle into the chair as if certifying the arrival as official and complete. Then, he gazed over a desktop already containing two stacks of papers.
One of his first acts would be to draw open the blinds and peer out at his domain. "I need to see what's going on out there," Frazier said. "I need to start getting a feel for this place."
Like the empty shelves and the nearly barren walls of the office that greeted him, the 19-sport athletic program is also now Frazier's to make of what he might.
In the meantime, if Frazier brought an inquiring mind and a resolve to build upon the successes of his predecessors, he also arrived with a sense of humor they would undoubtedly counsel him to hang onto.
Upon being greeted by associate AD Jim Donovan, Frazier quipped: "Hey, Jim, how are you doing? Do you have any spare change in your pocket to help with the budget?"
After waiting this long to finally step into his new job, it seemed even the unusually-daunting task of confronting the budget was something Frazier was in a hurry to take on.
