‘Scholarship lady’ will be tough for UH to replace

Gregg Tipton, a University of Hawaii quarterback from the mid-1980s, stopped in his tracks when he spied Carol Gouveia in the stands at Aloha Stadium a while back.

"Hey, thanks for everything. I really, really appreciate all you’ve done for us (and) you’re still there," Tipton told Gouveia. "I can’t believe it!"

It is a variation on a familiar greeting Gouveia has received over her 30 years with ‘Ahahui Koa Anuenue, the UH athletic booster organization.

Now, after being a guiding hand for an organization that has raised tens of millions of dollars for athletic scholarships, the "scholarship lady" — as she has been known — is stepping away next week.

At age 72, Gouveia said she will catch her breath for a while before deciding upon the next chapter in a life where 32 years have been spent in service to UH.

"The athletes who have come through here are what you remember," Gouveia said. In her case, that takes in about 4,000 who have received scholarships during her tenure.

"Knowing that what we’ve been doing for all these years has helped young people to move forward in their lives makes you feel good," Gouveia said.

Judge James Burns, whose late father, then-Gov. John A. Burns, founded AKA in 1967, said, "My father’s goal was for UH to be a first-class university and UH Manoa to have a first-class athletic program. AKA was started in the 1960s to assist in accomplishing that goal (and) during her time at AKA, Carol has worked tirelessly to accomplish my father’s goal."

Al Costa, a former AKA official, said, "I once heard someone say that if you were going to start a business, you’d want Carol to be the one to run it for you so that you could go home and take a nap and know it was being run well."

AKA, which currently raises nearly $6 million per year, also contributes to funding facilities and recruiting for the 21-sport athletic program.

It is a far cry from the almost desk-drawer enterprise AKA had been when Gouveia became its first secretary in 1983. She became executive director a year later, a position she held for nearly 20 years, navigating the considerable UH bureaucracy and politics. For the past decade she has overseen the preferred seating and parking programs.

During her stay she has seen membership grow from a few hundred to about 6,000.

"Carol can probably tell you from memory where each of those seats (in the stadium) are and who has them," Costa said. "She has an amazing memory."

The departures this month of Gouveia and president Vince Baldemor, who leaves to become athletic director at Hawaii Pacific University, are significant as AKA is tasked with increasing funding for the department. "They will be very hard to replace," athletic director Ben Jay acknowledged at a UH Board of Regents meeting.

To many UH athletes, however, Gouveia will fondly remain "the scholarship lady."

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