Kenneth Mortimer’s "ah-ha" sports moment as University of Hawaii president came when the 28-4 Rainbow Wahine basketball team was denied a 1993 NCAA tournament berth.

As Mortimer used to tell it, he had barely moved into Bachman Hall and "Everybody was asking me: ‘What are you gonna do about that?’ I got a quick lesson in just how serious people here take their UH sports."

M.R.C. Greenwood’s awakening came a year into her tenure with the 2010 fracturing of the Western Athletic Conference.

A powerful booster is said to have explained to her that as wonderful as that telescope on Mauna Kea is, more people will be alarmed if UH is left without a league to play in.

Which is part of what makes David Lassner, named to the position this week, unique among the seven presidents in the Division I era at the school: He comes to the job with considerable institutional knowledge.

Lassner has 34 years on campus as a student or employee, more familiarity with the athletic program and feel for the place it occupies in the state’s consciousness than all his predecessors combined.

"Clearly, athletics is really important to the community," Lassner told the Star-Advertiser during a round of interviews last month. "It is absolutely an essential part of what we do and how we engage the community." 

For now, he says, that means, "my desire would be to make Division I work economically, somehow."

That grasp of local sensibilities can be a valuable asset as UH athletics tries to negotiate one of the most challenging periods in its history.

UH presidents, in part because of the learning curve with athletics in general and the state in particular, have been a mixed bag. 

Mortimer became a strong, positive figure in UH sports once he got up to speed, though he would declare the public firing of football coach Bob Wagner the most regrettable episode.

Greenwood saw to the delivery of Mountain West and Big West membership but also gave us the debilitating aftermath of the "Wonder Blunder." 

Fujio Matsuda (1974-84) saw UH through one tumultuous period and denied an ambitious 22-year-old Rick Pitino the guarantee of the full-time head coaching job. 

Evan Dobelle (2001-04) dared us to dream big but, with the arrival of Herman Frazier as hand-picked AD, quickly marked the end of athletic solvency.

David McClain (2004-09) promoted athletics as "the front porch of the university," a view that Lassner seems to share. But he also experienced the perils of leaving an AD unmonitored when it cost UH June Jones. 

While Lassner has made it clear that "the president does not have a direct role in managing athletics" on the system’s campuses, leaving that to the chancellors and ADs of Manoa and Hilo, he will have a lot to say about the marching orders.

Unlike Albert Simone (1984-92), though, that probably won’t include demanding more and more pitches while standing at the Les Murakami Stadium plate during a special batting practice in a vain attempt to put a ball on the warning track.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.