Aloha Stadium is an aging, rusting edifice with an uncertain future and the job of running it on a shoestring, with fans, tenants and the stadium authority looking over your shoulder, is surely one of the toughest jobs in the state system.

But it will not be the most daunting task that its new manager, Scott Chan, has taken on.

Chan learned all about challenges as a quarterback at Kaiser High in 1972. That's when, as a 14-year-old freshman, head coach Ron Lee gave him a pat on the shoulder pads and sent him out to start the first varsity league game in the school's history — at Kahuku.

The Cougars got shellacked 44-0 and Chan, a 5-foot-9, 130-pounder, was a pinata for the OIA Champion Red Raiders.

"We couldn't block anybody and he took a beating," Lee said. "One of the worst I've seen anybody take. I didn't think we'd see him (back out for football) on Monday."

But Chan was there that day — and every one after that — in an 0-8 season that told Lee and, eventually a whole lot of other people, plenty about the quarterback's perseverance and leadership.

By the time he graduated, Chan had become a record-setting quarterback for a winning program who would go on to a successful career at Willamette University. He returned home to be the head coach and athletic director at his alma mater.

Now, after 11 years at Aloha Stadium, the 48-year-old Chan takes over the management of the place where he played the final three games of his high school career and brings much hoped-for stability to the operation of the state's largest athletic facility.

He is, for reasons of experience, character and willingness to work through obstacles to accommodate, the best man for the job. The stadium authority's nearly two-year search to fill the position ended right where it should have. Whether he would take the position after it was offered, was the biggest question. "I think I surprised a few people," Chan said.

Fortunately the feeling that Chan said greeted him upon his first appearance there as a player — that Aloha Stadium is "a special place" — has stayed with him and keeps him in Halawa. It drives him in his new role.

"We think he's a great choice," said Keith Amemiya, executive director of the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association. "A great choice. Just a great choice," seconded Herman Frazier, UH athletic director. "I think it was a wise decision," Lee said. "He's such a high-character guy with tremendous integrity and smart. People will work hard for him."

For all the applications that the Aloha Stadium job attracted, history tells us it is not a job for just anyone. But, then, Chan long ago demonstrated he is a man who relishes and is up for precisely that type of a challenge.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.