 I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My book Beyond the Lines is about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, and finding greatness, which is what this show is all about. My special guest today is the highly respected leader of our University of Hawaii Athletic programs. He is David Matlin, and today we are going beyond sports. Hey, David, good to see you. Hello, Rusty. Great seeing you too. Thrilled to be on the show today. Now, David, can you give us the latest updates with the coronavirus situations with your athletic programs? Yeah, I definitely can update you and I can also promise you in about 15 minutes after your update to things will have changed probably. But on the big picture, we're working with our conferences, the NCA, also lead one, which is all the FBS schools, working on protocols for safe return and competition. Obviously, we've had a relook at our budgets because there's been a financial impact. We're doing that with two core values in mind. The first one is health and safety of our student athletes, our coaches, our staff, our university community and our fans. That's paramount. And secondly, our second core value that we measure every decision we make against is to continue scholarship and education of our student athletes and to keep our staff working productively. So we're focused on all those things. Obviously, we have to do this, steward our money well to make these things happen. And obviously, we want to still compete at a high level, but we have to take care of those first two things first. Yeah, that makes sense. And David, if we go back some years, I know you graduated from the University of Michigan. And how was the experience of being in that University of Michigan stadium, watching those Wolverine football games? It was a pretty phenomenal experience. I actually started going to Michigan football games. I moved to Michigan when I was about six years old. My dad started taking me in 1971. We used to go to one or two games before I even went to college there. It was phenomenal. I mean, you have 100,000 people, the biggest crowd in the country. Great fans coming from all around the Midwest area. Just great energy and lots of fun. I mean, I'll go back to the Bolsheviker days, which was just amazing ambiance there. Yeah, I can imagine. I would watch it on TV with Jim Harbaugh as the quarterback. So when did you end up coming to Hawaii? Well, I was born in Honolulu. I lived here for two weeks. And then my dad was the general manager of the Hawaii Islanders, that team. Then we went to Vancouver, Seattle, Milwaukee, two places in Michigan. And I was a junior in college, and I met my future wife, who's from Honolulu. And we realized we were born in the same hospital, had the same delivery in doctor and our parents lived about a half mile from each other. Within about two years, I had proposed and we were already married. And then we moved to Houston, where I worked in Houston Astros for six years. And then like local girls, she wanted to come home. So we moved back here in 1993, really without jobs. And if I would have known how hard it was going to be, I might not have done it, but I'm really glad we did. Wow. And so you mentioned your wife and then you have your two kids, right? So tell me about them. All right, that's a great photo. You know, my wife Dana, we've been married 31 years. As I mentioned, we met at University of Michigan. She's an amazing partner and I don't know how I would get through a day without her. My oldest daughter is Kisa, who's a graduate from University of Notre Dame, which is tough for a Michigan guy to say, as well as she got her master's from SMU. She's in the field of education, her passion is environmental science. And my son Ross just graduated from USC's film school. And he's actually planning on doing the Peace Corps in Guatemala, but that's on a little bit of hold right now. So he's been on doing that for a few years, but obviously they're my pride and joy. And you see our dog there now, that makes the map look five. Yeah, so cute. Now, David, did you read my first book? And I want to know about what you, if you did and what you thought about it. Yeah, I definitely did. And what I got to kick out is, you had your four P's, people, purpose, process, and performance. Well, I always had three P's, passion, persistence, and purpose. But now I have four P's because people's got to be there. And one thing I learned from my dad is it's all about people. So it resonated with me. And what I really liked, and it was just a lot of your headliner quotes at the very beginning, just how that really set it up for the whole chapter. Just some great leadership tools. And frankly, it's helped me to continue to develop where I am as a leader and to pick up some tools to go forward. Well, those P's, those are all necessary. And I like your P's as well. And David, I know you became athletic director in 2015. What kind of culture did you want to establish when you became athletic director for your athletic department? Well, what I would say, it's really a winning with integrity culture. And what that really means, it's not just winning on the field of player, on the field of competition. Obviously, we're competitive. We like to win. We like to win. I think there's value in striving for excellence. But it's winning in the classroom. It's winning in the community. It's supporting each other. It's really, because if you don't win with integrity, it's really not winning. And what we're trying to do is develop young men and women who are going to be future leaders and great fathers and mothers and friends. Coaches can have an amazing impact on that. And as administrators, our job is really to equip and enable both coaches and student athletes. Yeah, it's all about integrity. And, David, I know that Spectrum Sports is really stepping up to support University of Hawaii athletics. And they had hired me to do some color commentary with Scott Robbs right there, who is just an absolute amazing guy. I mean, he has a special gift of doing commentary. And what are your thoughts about how awesome it is, how they added tennis and water polo to the lineup? That was huge. I mean, we had started discussions about covering some of our Olympic sports and sports that might not get as much notoriety. And they stepped up right away. And frankly, they found it to be really good programming. I mean, the water polo matches were great. That's a fast-moving sport. I think they're planning on doing more of it. And tennis worked out real well. Plus, we have some real good tennis teams. And you're right about Scott. I mean, Scott is, it's interesting. My dad, when he was such a small world, when my dad was the general manager of the Hawaiian Islanders, he actually hired Don Robbs, I think as the PA announcer back in the early 60s. So Scott does a phenomenal job. He's probably one of the most versatile people that I've ever worked with in that business. He can do it all. What are your thoughts about your tennis coaches, Joelle for the men and June for the women? Well, this was Joelle's first year. She did a phenomenal job. Unfortunately, it got cut short right when they were starting to get their own. I mean, he has some really good team. And I really enjoy when I, you know, I meet with the, before I hire a coach, the one thing I do for every coach job, I meet with the team and I ask them, I don't ask them who a coach they want to hire. They might tell me that. But I ask them, what characteristics are they looking for in a coach? From their perspective. And I, a lot of times I take anywhere from three to four pages of notes. Once they get going, it's pretty amazing. And I just found our, both of our tennis team student athletes are amazing. And both Joelle and June have done an amazing job. I mean, June for many years. And I think our tennis future looks very bright. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And David, what do you look for when you're hiring head coaches? You know, it's, it's pretty simple in some ways. It really is about character. I mean, and it's character. Now you got to define it. And, you know, you got to define it. And you got, you have to do a lot of research. You have to talk to a lot of people. But it's, because a lot of people say, well, you got to hire the best coach. Well, you know, most people that make your finalists and your shortlist, they can all coach. They might have some different philosophies, some different theories and different schemes, but it really is about character and work ethic. And, you know, and one thing I've been fortunate to be in this business for a while where there's a lot of people you can call to find out how they, how they worked in different situations. So, you know, other, other than, you know, character in that with integrity mantra, you know, everything else is pretty much a distant second. Now those things factor in, but to me, those are more like the tie breakers. You, in order to be even considered, you have to have those first two things. I agree with you. And what are your goals for the UH athletics nowadays? Yeah, well, you know, the goals really haven't changed. Our goals are, you know, maybe three-fold. Maybe I'll give you a fourth reason, the fourth thing. But, you know, it's obviously it's to educate young men and women. I'm excited that we had our highest Q and GPA in the fall at 3.13. That's our average for all of our students for the whole time they've been there. Our semesters are always over 3.0. We've started keeping stats on these, I think, 20 years ago. So great support from our academic support, Dr. Canberra and our counselors do a great job. And frankly, it's a lot of it's our coaches bringing the right people in and focusing on academics. Obviously, athletically, we want to provide great sportsmanship and we want to win. One metric we look at is the Learfield Cup standings. Last year, we were 65 out of about 350. It was our highest ranking in 10 years, I believe. And out of the non-power five schools, we were 10th out of 290. And that's basically how you do an NCAA tournament performance. The disappointing thing is this year, we were trending to be higher than last year to get more Learfield Cup standing points than last year. But obviously, our season was cut short. David, what are some of the biggest challenges you deal with as AD? Well, you know, the resource management. I mean, we have to be great stewards of our resources. I mean, one thing I know is we do a pretty good job with the resources we have. I mean, you know, if a coach comes and says, you know, we can't win if we don't have this, I'll say, well, you know, we are winning. It doesn't mean we don't want to do better. It doesn't mean we don't want more. But we have to be very fiscally responsible. We have to make some tough choices and we really have to focus on what are the needs versus the wants. I mean, you obviously want to get some of those wants. And we've upped our game when it comes to nutrition. And we've upped our game when it comes to the academic support. And even our facilities, they were in the last five years, we've had great improvement. We're very blessed that the legislature has, you know, invested in our facilities and we've got the support of the university. We've got incredible gym one and gym two practice facilities. Our tennis courts are getting repaved as we speak right now. So we're getting a new sound system to Sandwich Air Center. So we have a lot of those projects that we're working on. But the challenge is really just making the decisions about where you're going to invest your time and your resources. And it's all about people. Well, I like hearing that the tennis courts are getting resurfaced. Yeah, it's such a beautiful tennis facility that you have there. I mean, it needs to stay at that high level. But yeah, I like what you said about having to try to be resourceful. And David, I want to know, are there like a bunch of David Matlin clones out there because I don't know how you do it because there might be three or four different sporting events going on at UH. And I'll see you at all of them at the same time, basically. How do you do it? Yeah, well, you do it because you've got a great team and a great family behind you and a supportive administration at the University of Hawaii. And I love going. I mean, I had someone recently say, well, you know, you know, I guess the one good thing is you don't have to go to all these events now so you free up some time. It's like, well, that's the best part of the job going to the event. So a lot of times I don't stay for the whole event, but I'll I'll be at a volleyball match. I'll go over to baseball, stop by volleyball, and I'll stop by the tennis match also. So to me, that's the best part to watch student athletes, you know, perform at a high level and watch their passion and action. I mean, that's that's inspiring to me. I frankly go to events. I go to events for me because it inspires me, you know, to get up the next morning early and come back and hit and hit and hit, you know, hit it hard to continue to try to get better, a little better each day. So, David, let's talk about football now. You hired coach Todd Graham, and I had him on the show a couple months ago. He is just an absolutely amazing guy. Why? Why did you hire him over everybody else? Yeah. You know, we had amazing people that are interested in the program. I mean, the program is, you know, Nick brought the program forward. We've been in three bowl games in four years. Hawaii is a special place. So the candidates were pretty impressive. Todd, when we met with Todd, it was it was in an airport in LA. Gosh, he's got incredible energy and passion. And frankly, I probably called 50 to 75 people getting learning about him. And I had some people that were good friends of mine that were Rice and Arizona State places he's worked. But it really comes down to character and that he really does want to be a leader of young men. He cares about where these men are going to be in 10 years from now, not just about their performance now. He's not going to sacrifice their short term for their long term. So I would just say it's character and he gets the winning with integrity mantra that we want to represent at the University of Hawaii. Yeah. And he, you know, he has great principles and values and he has that superior culture of excellence and I'm just so excited to see what he's going to be able to do and how he's going to really help our student athletes. Let's talk about, let's talk some volleyball now. I mean, I had coach Charlie Wade on the show as well and I'm super excited for him that his seniors are coming back. What are your thoughts about that? Yeah, well, first of all, they're incredible student athletes. I mean, they're great students. I mean, one thing that a lot of people don't know about is Charlie's, the grade point average of our volleyball team is, you know, three, four or higher, the highest in the West and he gets an award the last few years for having great academics also. Excited that, you know, the plan is for them to come back. You know, they were, have been competing for a national championship and this year could have been the year. So with them coming back next year, bringing back three All-Americans is obviously great, but they're all American people also. Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's that's that's the most important. But and then you also hired coach Robin Amo for women's volleyball and and they're, I mean, she's doing a great job. I mean, what are your thoughts about women's volleyball? Well, she, Robin's done an amazing job. She's hired great coaches in Angelica and Kalail. She's got a great team. She recruits well. The thing about Robin is she cares. She cares so, so much. Volleyball has made a big impact in her life and she wants to share that with others. And, you know, she is a relentless worker. I mean, she's a, you know, a three-time Olympian. I mean, she's just an amazing coach and she's really proven that she can bring great student athletes in here and focus on the academics and the year they had last year was an amazing year. I mean, yeah, for her to be an Olympian, I mean, obviously, I mean, she has to have the highest of standards and for her to be, you know, instilling that in her young women, I mean, that's exactly what you want to see as the leader, right? No, no question. Just thrilled with, you know, and so much of it is, you know, the people they hire Angelica and Kalail, they do an incredible job also. But yeah, but Robin, you know, Robin, she cares. And when people know you, you know, what they say, they say, once they know you care, you know, they're gonna listen to you and they're gonna follow you more and Robin is phenomenal at that. Yeah, it's empathy for sure. And David, the UH swimming and diving teams are having incredible success as well. Can you tell me more about that? Well, so proud of our swimming team. They obviously do a great job academically. We had a coach that I hired four years ago, Van Schemel, who won, you know, back-to-back championships and last year they won the men and women's this year. He, Stanford hired him. And so we hired his assistant, Elia, who continued the tradition of great grades and they won a men's championship and a women's championship. And they were poised to have one of our best years in the NCAAs in decades, if not of all time. Great student athletes are swimmers. You talk about a dedicated bunch. I mean, these are people who get up really early in the morning and just go for it each and every day and amazing student athletes. Yeah, I remember when I was in college, I mean, those swimmers and divers, I mean, they wake up super, super early for their practices. I mean, I don't know how they do that, but they do it. And what are your thoughts about men's basketball? Coach Aaron Ganot and his team? Excited about his team. We should be announcing our schedule pretty soon, which has worked out. It'll be one of our best schedules in quite a long time. He has some great recruits coming in. Or Iran, I mean, here's what you can say about Iran. When he came here, our APR, that's our academic progress rate that the NCAA measures. It was at 937, which means that if we lost one more, if we lost one more point, we'd be on, we might not be eligible for post season, including conference championships. He's gotten 2,000s in the last two years and he's doing it while competing. He's doing it the right way. He's got a great coaching staff and frankly, his players, they get better. So looking forward to this season of men's basketball. And I know we have a lot of new athletes coming in. No, that's so exciting. I'm so happy for them. And talk to me a little bit about the women's basketball program as well. You know, the one thing I'll tell you about Laura, Laura Beaman's team, every year they get better at the end of the year. You know, they play a really tough schedule and she, Laura is a teacher. Laura cares about these young women. Laura is also a leader in the department. I mean, she helps in so many different ways, but this year they were trending and they won their first conference, big West championship game. And then the season got canceled. They were trending to possibly make the NCAAs, if not the NIT. And like I said, when you look at the success she's had since she's been here, it's pretty phenomenal. And what I really admire about a coach is when you see a team every year get better at the end of the year when they started. To me, that's that solid coaching. David, we, I mean, we're so lucky that we have such a beautiful stand sheriff center. I mean, that has to attract so many student athletes that wanna come and play basketball and volleyball. Is that true? There's no question. We're blessed by the stand sheriff center. It's one of the best arenas in the West Coast. And it is phenomenal. I mean, and when you get 10,000 people in there for a men's volleyball game or a basketball game or a woman's volleyball game, it is a great home field, a core advantage. But it's a first class facility and you gotta get rich sheriff and his crew. It's 25 years old and it is in phenomenal shape. And to me, the stand sheriff center, I never met Stan, but I know his son very well. It's very dear to me because my first job at UH, my first office was in the ticket office at the stand sheriff center. So I used to go there every day for five years. And, you know, I mean, that facility, frankly, without that, I probably wouldn't have gotten that job because that's when we needed to have more ticketing staff at the time. Yeah, you're right. You know, rich sheriff is one of my longtime close friends and what he's done, you know, with his staff over these decades. I mean, it's just, it's really first class, like you said. And, you know, what's the latest updates with the Aloha Stadium situation that you can share? Yeah, well, right now the most recent information is that they're still trending for 2023. We are involved in, you know, in the discussions where we've given our thoughts. I mean, Coach Todd Graham met with them also. He had actually some really good thoughts because he was at Tulsa and some other facilities that came online. So he had that coach's eye. We're gonna be more involved as we go closer with the consultants. You know, that can be a game changer for us as far as for the student athletes, but also for our fans. Because, I mean, Scott Chan and his crew do a great job at Aloha Stadium, but they're limited by, you know, a stadium that was built in the 70s where I think we'll provide a lot more fan experience with a new facility and a better economic model also. And I think that's super smart to really get the input of somebody like a Coach Todd Graham, because, I mean, he knows all the ins and the outs of every, you know, stadium that, I mean, he's played in for so long, so many different places. Yeah, there is no question that, I mean, coaches, they play in facilities, they know what works, they know what doesn't. So yeah, that's, and he's really, you know, he pays attention to those details and he was able to share some things. And frankly, we're able to incorporate some of those into our requests and so will the stadium. Now, you know, earlier we talked about, you know, being at University of Michigan in that stadium and then you're trying to enhance the fan experience of the new Aloha Stadium. What else can be done, you know, to get it to that level where, I mean, even when Michigan would have just average teams, I mean, they would still sell out. I mean, every game. How can we get UH to that level where we can start selling out some of these UH events? Yeah, well, you know, as far as football, I mean, for, you know, for our volleyball sports and basketball, we do better than most. I mean, our volleyball is as good as it gets, but at Aloha Stadium, a lot of it, we have to figure out how to attract millennials, how to attract the next generation. We haven't done as good a job at that. So we have to focus on that. We came up with a ticketing package this year called the H-Pass, which gave you season tickets for all events that you pay monthly for. Frankly, our marketing team, I want to brag on them. They did an incredible job. They won a national marketing award for season ticket packages by our H-Pass. Our goal was to sell 100 of them, we sold 505, but we need to look at what matters to this group. Wifi matters, events at the event themselves. So, you know, obviously your food and beverage menus, the parking lot experience, the ambiance from when you come into the stadium until you leave all matters. And I really believe with the new stadium, a lot of these things will be able to be incorporated. That can help us. But at the end of the day, we need to do better. We need to work harder. And we need to not be afraid to fail. If something doesn't work, we just evaluate it and then we try something else. Well, I like your thoughts and your insights right there. I mean, yeah, I mean, it seems like we're headed in the right direction. And David, you know, a lot of people, when they see you at these sporting events, they know who you are, they recognize you, but they might not know all of the things that you do behind the scenes. Can you share with me about some of the things that you deal with behind the scenes that a lot of those people don't know about? Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes the jobs are overwhelming to me. There's so much work you're actually doing, even with your conferences and with your fellow ADs. I mean, scheduling events is, and I have a lot of help with that, but especially in the football area, is a lot of art, more art than science. It's really, you know, when you're doing your best is you're spending more time with student athletes. I mean, I do get the chance to meet with student athletes sometimes for positive things and sometimes for some self-correction. I don't believe in discipline for punishment. I believe in discipline for correction. Overall, we have an amazing student-athletes, but a lot of it is just keeping up with the trends. There's a lot of reading in this job. Talking to your peers, reading books, a lot of training we do for our coaches as well as our team on how to be a healthier and smarter team, and there's just a lot of details. I mean, I try to stay out of the weeds. I've got great people that help me do that. One thing that I struggle with is sometimes I get a little too far into the weeds. So I give them my staff permission to tell me to get out of the weeds and let us handle that and we'll let you know when we need to let you know. That's good that you told your staff to let you know about that. Well, you have to empower people. I mean, this is not... ADs, obviously you're the leader and you need to set the tone, but so much about this is empowerment. The people on our staff and our team, all of our employees are so critical to our success. And really, at every all staff meeting, I mentioned two things that every when we have our whole staff together. First came from Pastor Wayne Cordero and it's about trying to get 1% better a day or do one thing better each day. If you can do that, the end of the year, you're done 365 things better or you're three and a half times better also. So you focus on that. And the other thing is so often, a lot of times people try to catch people doing things wrong. I want us to catch people doing things right and praise them and create that type of culture. And it's important that our whole staff that we encourage each other. Because as you do that, that's how I think you change department and you change the world a little. David, I want to thank you for taking time in your schedule to be on the show today. I mean, I can see why the UH Athletic Programs are headed in the right direction under your leadership and really about character and culture. And it's all about the student athletes, like you said, and having the coaches really understand that as well. Yeah, well, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. You know, it's a blessing. As I tell our student athletes when we're recruiting trips is that you're not just playing for your team or the University of Hawaii, you're playing for the whole state. And that's an incredible responsibility and a great opportunity for them and all of us to be Hawaii's team. So we're blessed to represent the entire state of Hawaii. And you are too. Thank you, David. Thanks, Aloha. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKomori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that David and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.