Everett’s hall of fame career began when HPU said ‘howzit’

Long before fame and fortune as a national sports media celebrity, he hung out by a pay phone at Fort Street Mall, waiting for a call from an office less than a block away.

Neil Everett, 23, was sweating, hoping he had enough money left to get back to the airport — and that when the phone rang it would be someone telling him he got the job.

The answers turned out to be "barely" and "yes."

"There were five candidates, and they did all the interviews and everything in one day. It was advertised for $18,000 a year, they said they’d give me $20,000 and I did cartwheels," said Everett, about accepting the sports information director’s job at what was known in 1985 as Hawaii Pacific College.

Twenty-nine years later, the ESPN "SportsCenter" anchor got another call from Hawaii Pacific University. This time to inform him that he’d been voted into its sports hall of fame.

"Nope, I think this is a first for me," said Everett, who will be inducted Tuesday in an event at the Hawaii Convention Center. "I’m not sure, but I might be in my (Beta Theta Pi) fraternity’s hall of shame."

Everett said initially his motivation was just to get back to Oahu, because he wasn’t doing much on Maui other than enjoying the beach.

"I saw the ad, and I had a journalism degree from Oregon, so I gave it a shot," he said.

Why not? He had worked at Fort Street Mall before, in 1982 when he first arrived in Hawaii. He was an advertising sign-holder for a shoe store. That was after washing dishes at Sizzler.

Everett remembers his first day on the job as a publicist for HPU athletics; he staffed a volleyball match at the tiny gym at Kawaiahao Church.

"I was fresh off the boat, wearing slacks, a long sleeve shirt and a tie," he said. "The first person I meet is Nahaku Brown, who looks at me, shakes her head and smiles. I’m sure she was thinking, ‘What have they done to us?’

"First of all, I don’t know jack about volleyball. Fortunately, they had a great stats crew that raised me. I knew enough to not get in their way.

"After the match, Nahaku put her arm around me and said, ‘You want beer? I said, ‘Yeah!’ Since then I’ve loved her to death. I would not have been comfortable if she were not included in this class. I thought she should’ve been in the first class."

Brown coached the Sea Warriors to the 1990 NAIA national championship. Cross country All-American and tennis standout Lisa Blomme, and the 1992-93 national championship basketball team are also being enshrined Tuesday.

They join the coach of that team, Tony Sellitto, in the HPU hall. Sellitto, who was also athletic director, was instrumental in re-hiring Everett to fill a role as compliance director after a brief TV stint.

"My stepdad who raised me (Dave Robertson) was a basketball coach. So when I met Tony, it was, ‘OK, I’ve dealt with you before,’ " Everett said.

Of course, working together on a national championship strengthened their bond. Everett said things like a game against Horace Grant and Clemson at McKinley High School were memorable.

He totaled 15 years at HPC and HPU, and after "dabbling in TV most of the time" finally got on and stuck with KGMB as sports director in 1996. In 2000 he got the call from ESPN and has worked on "SportsCenter" in Bristol, Conn., and Los Angeles since.

"I still deal with a lot of sports information directors. When you go up and say, ‘Hey I was an SID for 15 years,’ that helps a lot. We have our own fraternity, and it helped me become better at the job I do now … better than if I’d sold widgets."

He credits all of the coaches and students he dealt with at HPU with helping his career now.

"I could bust out 10 of them right now who are as deserving as I am to be put in this hall of fame," he said. "I didn’t do anything except do my job and they made my job do-able."

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.