UH Athletic Director Craig Angelos settling in to new job in Manoa

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Craig Angelos has officially completed his first week as the University of Hawaii’s new athletics director.

Five days on the job and Angelos says that he’s made good on one of his promises from his introductory press conference, getting to know the community.

“It has been great.” Angelos told Hawaii News Now. “I hope to keep that pace going and then processing information as we go forward is how we can be strategic with those partnerships too.”

Angelos officially took office on Monday, hitting the ground running on getting acclimated in Manoa.

“It’s been a whirlwind, I flew in last Friday, so it’s been exactly one week.” Angelos said “I had a lot of meetings, a lot of receptions, conference meetings, Mountain West conference meetings were in town, so a little bit of everything.”

While also introducing himself to the 21 head coaches and their staffs that he now oversees.

“We’ve had a full staff meeting this week where I was able to meet with everybody, talk with them, start to have individual meetings with the coaches, individual meetings with the leaders in the department.” Angelos said. “I eventually want to meet with everybody in the department.”

As his tenure continues, Angelos has some main points he wants to address immediately — fundraising and facilities.

“The key to fundraising is making the connections is about personalization and it’s about effort. I mean, you can’t always control the outcome, but you can always control your effort and I always say activity breeds productivity.”

“I think we need to have top notch facilities because young people buy with their eyes and we’re in this ever growing struggle to be better and an arms race as people say, but some people say, oh, you can’t really compete with some of those other people, so why try, I don’t believe in that.”

Angelos is inheriting a program that he says is in good shape and he’s excited to see the Warriors and Wahine get to work.

“I do believe that our programs are doing very well.” Angelos said. “I think some, we’ve got to get a little bit better at, but I think we’re in a good space where we don’t have to do a heavy lift, but we still need to keep moving forward and continue to make adjustments and get there. I think we will.”

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