Posted on Fri, Apr. 22, 2005

Hawaii getting benefit of Frazier's skills
BY DAVID ALDRIDGE
Knight Ridder Newspapers

HONOLULU - (KRT) - The television is always on in Herman Frazier's office here so that he can keep up with what's happening on the mainland, but he doesn't stay glued to it for long.

There are constituents to meet, commercials to make, deals to be done for the University of Hawaii's athletic department.

" You have to understand that the people here have true feelings," Frazier said. "They love this state. They love this university. And you just can't come with outside ideas and think you know it all. You've got to be able to work with the people and work it all out."

For the last three years, Frazier, 50, has done just that as Hawaii's athletic director, putting down roots thousands of miles from his native Philadelphia while trying to build up the only game in town in his new state. He will return to Philly at the end of the month as an honorary referee for the Penn Relays.

Hawaii is but the latest stop on a journey that has taken Frazier from Germantown High School to a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics as a member of the U.S. 4x400-meter relay team, to an NCAA championship in the 400 meters in 1977, to two decades as an administrator with the U.S. Olympic Committee and Arizona State, to the position of athletic director at Alabama-Birmingham, and to the job of chef de mission (or chief of the delegation) for the U.S. team last summer at the Athens Olympics.

" The Athens experience for me - to have been an Olympic gold medalist and then walk out on the far right, on the front line, leading that team into that stadium - it just sent chills up and down my body," he said.

" And then to have a person like Dawn Staley get in front of me, carrying the flag, from Philadelphia, Dobbins Tech, knowing what she went through to be successful, I just can't tell you" what that meant, he said. "As an administrator, that was the ultimate. Other than the gold medal, that was the ultimate."
After the Games, Frazier - one of a handful of African American athletic directors in the country - returned to Hawaii to continue reaching toward his goal of having nationally ranked teams across the board at Hawaii.

Frazier's work has not been about afternoon luaus or mai tais at the beach. Within weeks of his arrival on the job in 2002, the NCAA began investigating the school's first national championship, won that year by the men's volleyball team. It ultimately determined that Hawaii had used an ineligible player for most of the season - he had played against professionals before the Rainbows' season began - and stripped the school of the title in September 2003.
An appeal, led by Frazier, was denied.

It was a "major loss to not only the school, but to the community," Frazier said. "And people in Hawaii, I've come to learn, they think they get picked on. And they think the NCAA and the mainland don't look at Hawaii the same."

But the men's volleyball program has recovered. The team is fifth in the country in the USA Today/CSTV coaches' poll.

Moreover, the women's volleyball team was ranked eighth in the nation and the women's swimming and diving team ended up 16th at the NCAA championships. The football team went 8-5 and won the Hawaii Bowl.

" I think our program, what we're trying to build here, is that we're going to be the best program in the Western Athletic Conference," Frazier said. "If I can equate being the best program in the Western Athletic Conference, then all of our coaches are striving to be somewhere in the top 25 in the country. That's what we tell them."

But Frazier's contract at Hawaii is up at the end of July, and he makes no secret of still being passionate about working in the Olympic movement - and doesn't blanch when the presidency of the U.S. Olympic Committee is mentioned.

" That's my passion," Frazier said of the Olympics. "It's almost a hobby. I've had the best of both worlds, from being vice president of USOC and dealing with all the collegiate athletics. I could see myself maybe one day working in Colorado Springs" at USOC headquarters.

You wonder why Frazier would be interested in the job when he could stay in Hawaii as long as he wants. His beloved track and field, for example, has seen better days. Like baseball, many of its stars have been embroiled in scandals involving performance-enhancing drugs and its testing programs have been questioned for accuracy and fairness. Its status in this country has long since diminished.

" But you go to the Penn Relays, over those three days, you're going to see over 14,000 kids compete," Frazier said. "And if the weather's good, you're going to see crowds over 100,000 over the three days. That tells you that it's not dead altogether.

" But Penn Relays is different. It's an institution. It's a `carnival,' what they call it. And I just have fun just going back and watching. I sit on the infield, right on the first turn, with all the old guys in the yellow hats."
---

© 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.