When the University of Hawai'i football, women's volleyball and soccer teams reported for camp this month, the new athletic director was there to greet them with a message.

Jim Donovan spoke about academics and winning, to be sure, but there was a deeper, heartfelt theme to be shared in the sessions.

He touched on the sense of family and the role UH sports plays in the state it calls home.

"I told them about the 'ohana feeling, that this is one of the few places in (major college) athletics where you represent a whole state," Donovan recalled. "Here, you're not just playing for yourselves and your team but the entire state. I told them it is an honor and a responsibility and that we are the only game in town. I told them, 'You are a focal point of the community and can actually lift the spirits of the whole state with your performance.'"

The success of the Sugar Bowl football and NCAA softball teams being two of the most recent examples.

The place that UH occupies in local consciousness and the hold it can have on the community is something Donovan has come by in an adult life mostly spent at and around UH.

He came to Hawai'i from California in the early 1980s as a football player, earned two degrees at the school, held a variety of positions — graduate assistant coach, baseball stadium manager, promotions manager, assistant and associate AD — and began a family here.

Even in the five years away from UH as executive director of the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl he stayed involved as an officer of the Lettermen's Club and season ticket holder.

"This is where I grew up and, really became an adult," Donovan said. "UH — and the state — are where I have shaped my life."

Indeed, it was where he met his wife, Tracy Orillo, on their first day of employment. A picture of Donovan in his football playing days (he started on the offensive line for Dick Tomey) hangs in son Joshua's room.

Part of the way he evaluates coaches is by whether he'd feel comfortable if his own children played for them.

"Representing UH and the state is a tremendous honor and that's something we should never lose sight of," Donovan said.

It is a point he has pressed with not only UH staff but in addressing Aloha Stadium staff and to business and community groups.

Said Donovan: "As an athletic department staff, as coaches and as players, we owe it to the fans and people of the state to put our best efforts forward."