By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Newcomers report to football camp at the University of Hawai'i today and when they arrive, they will find a feisty, driven-to-produce head coach June Jones there to meet them.

Jones starts his fourth year at UH steely-eyed intent on not only proving that the Warriors can turn what has been a frustrating 11-year long corner and achieve back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 1989-90, but that the controversies of this past off-season have fueled his resolve to make it happen.

Not since Bob Wagner was early in his tenure as head coach, Jamal Farmer was leading the rushing and Garrett Gabriel was doing the passing for 9-3 (1989) and 7-5 (1990) seasons has UH managed consecutive winning finishes.

Twice in the interim, the 1992 (Holiday Bowl) and '99 (O'ahu Bowl), UH has gone to the post-season and been unable to follow it up with a winning season.

Even after the 9-3 finish of last season and its rousing, touchdowns-by-the-bunch conclusion, there are doubts. With a record five-game road schedule, there are questions about quarterback Tim Chang's durability; replacing first-round draft pick Ashley Lelie and a portion of the offensive line and secondary. And, not the least of all, there has been hovering speculation about Jones himself.

Questions specifically about his commitment to staying at UH and how away-from-the-field controversies might have taken a toll. After an offseason of headlines in which Jones took contract extension talks off the table, was dealt setbacks on university stadium ownership and turf installation and received criticism for letters he had written, you wondered how he would enter camp.

Well, wonder no longer. Spend an hour — or two — with him and you'll see the hardened resolve to not only pick up where the Warriors left off last season but to advance the mission of raising the level of the football program.

There is a dig-in-and-show-'em firmness to proving the Warriors are on the rise, not stuck in a cycle of following a step forward with a step backward, and he is the one to take them there.

"I'm motivated — more so than I've ever been here — to be successful; to be all that we can be this year," Jones said.

"I really think, right now, everybody is waiting — for whatever reasons — (and) thinking their two little 9-win seasons are just a flash in the pan and aren't gonna last. I'm committed to making it last. I want to put Hawai'i at a different level football-wise than (we) have ever been. I think we are on the verge of doing that over the next three, four years."

If the controversies of the off-season have done anything, they would seem to have returned him to the job that brought him back to Hawai'i in the first place, football, while stroking his competitive fires.

"I like getting backed into a corner and I like the pressure being on me to get it done," Jones said. "I perform better when it is that way. I think it is just my makeup and there are some things that have happened in the past six, eight months that have motivated me.

"My mindset is different than most people and I sometimes need that to push me. I'm a laid-back guy and I have confidence in who I am, but at the same time, I get pissed off a little differently and then I go a little harder. And, I'm at that right now. It is an accumulation of everything I've had to deal with," Jones said.

"Like I said, sometimes it takes me ... well, I had to have a coach tell me I couldn't play for him — that I couldn't play for anybody — to be able to go make it in the National Football League. I almost quit. But it became my motivation for making it."

Camp opens this week and nobody should be surprised if one of the most driven people there is somebody without a uniform.