Many of us have searched for creative ways to fill our suddenly boring days the past 15 months. In stark contrast, Lauren Conching has found the 5-to-11 shift.
As in 5 in the morning to 11 at night, every day for the past five months.
That’s how long it’s been since Hawaii Pacific University added interim Athletic Director to Conching’s still active duties as women’s tennis coach, assistant athletic director and senior woman administrator.
In early January, new Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi chose HPU AD Sam Moku to be his chief of staff. Before it was announced, a stunned Conching was asked to take over as interim AD, along with the duties she’d basically been performing full-time for the last decade.
She asked for time to think about it and talked with husband Hendrik Bode — former HPU tennis player and current HPU men’s coach — and trusted friends.
“They were like, ‘When would you ever get the chance to try this out? Nobody gets that chance,’ ” Conching recalls. “They said, ‘You can test it and if you enjoy it then maybe it’s a path you can try. If you don’t, then it will be over soon.’ ”
It has been endless since, and will be until Dr. Debbie Snell takes over as the new “Executive Director” of the school’s 14-sport athletic program next month.
Conching has been waking early each day to work in her home’s “peace and quiet” for a couple hours. Then she gets 6-year-old daughter Lana ready for school and heads to her office at the top of Fort Street Mall.
During the season, which just ended with her women’s team reaching its eighth NCAA Elite Eight in Conching’s 10 years (there was no tournament last year because of the pandemic), she went to practice in the brutal early afternoon heat at the Ala Moana courts. It beat last year, when those courts were closed for months after the 2019-20 season was canceled.
From there, the 2000 Kaiser High alum did more “office work” at a Hawaii Kai coffee shop while waiting to pick up Lana at Kamilo‘iki Elementary.
She would take her daughter home, “do home stuff and start work again after 8 p.m., until I fell asleep on my computer.”
She has worked every day since the middle of January.
“When I first got the job, they initially said just maintain, keep the ship floating,” Conching recalls. “But I thought it was such a great opportunity. I’ve been working here 14 years and I know exactly the changes I want to see.”
That led to her outrageous daily “routine,” broken up only when it got extended by major complications or recent road trips.
First came a swarm of COVID cases as students returned from Christmas break. All practices were shut down except for basketball, which was in the midst of its season.
“That was crazy,” Conching says. “All the coaches are contact tracers. Every week we were COVID testing. Every week I was like, please don’t come back positive.”
Her next huge challenge was creating policies with university lawyers that allowed teams to travel safely, and convincing the administration that it was possible — and crucial for the athletes. She was deeply grateful for the support, from those at HPU and the PacWest Conference.
In the shortened season, she took her team to Arizona three times in the final four weeks, and learned a lot, particularly about her players. The Sharks fell to fifth-ranked Azusa Pacific twice before blitzing by it the third time in the NCAA Regional final.
In her “spare time” at home during the season, Conching also did an analysis in athletics to see what direction everyone thought the department should be moving in, so the new AD wouldn’t have to start from scratch.
Conching sees that as this summer’s focus, hoping we “might be going back to normalcy and we just need something to be excited about, something a little different.
“If we don’t prepare to come out of this we wasted this time.”
She wants the difference to be seen from inside and out. It will involve more emphasis on social media, videos and appearance. And coaches are being encouraged to take updated approaches.
After all everyone has been through she hopes there is a new, happier look and outlook. She knows there was a much more joyful look from her team in the last month.
Its 2020 season ended in the midst of a match last March. The players found out the NCAA canceled sports via Instagram while they were playing.
“The biggest difference for the girls that came back this year was that they were missing closure from last year,” Conching said. “Really missing old teammates and they were stuck in the past.”
It got better as the world got better and healthier, and real competition kept coming.
“The best thing about this team was everything they said they were going to do they did,” Conching said. “They were very dedicated to each other. They trusted the coaches a lot and helped us so much.”
They had to. It was that kind of year.
Conching and her husband have been HPU’s head tennis coaches for 10 years. Both have national coach of the year honors and the HPU men captured the 2016 NCAA championship. Bode played in three NCAA tournaments as a Shark and was the ITA Senior Male Player of the Year.
His wife did not get a scholarship offer out of Kaiser. She won the 2001 National Junior College doubles while at Collin County in Texas, then transferred to Stony Brook in New York for her last two years.
That led to an internship at CBS Sports, where she worked the NFL, U.S. Open and March Madness. She thought sports reporting would be her future, but April snow brought her home.
By the end of that year, her family’s tennis ohana — mom Jony has worked for USTA Hawaii Pacific since 2006 — found her a job as Stefan Pampulov’s assistant, coaching the HPU women. She was DII’s national assistant coach of the year in 2010.
It was just the beginning.
