Few head coaches at the University of Hawaii have had their careers in Manoa last 20 years or longer.

None of them have made such an art of survival as Mike Trapasso.

UH announced on Wednesday that Trapasso, whose latest contract was due to expire Aug. 31, will be retained for the 2021 season, which will be his 20th guiding Rainbow Warrior baseball.

Only three others among the current head coaches of UH’s 21 teams, sailing’s Andy Johnson, softball’s Bob Coolen and golf’s Ronn Miyashiro, have more seniority.

But none of their reigns have come with the undercurrents of drama that have surrounded Trapasso’s. At least four times in his 512-505 tenure the contract has gone down to the final year, if not months, before being renewed.

None of them have had their presumptive successor already chosen, only to have their job saved in the 11th hour or by a home run in extra innings. But Trapasso has. Just like his pitching days at Oklahoma State, Trapasso has shown a late-inning tenacity.

At least once Trapasso has been told “Get to the NCAA tournament or you won’t be coming back.”

In the 2010 Western Athletic Conference tournament opener down 7-6, Kolten Wong’s two-out, 10th-inning home run with one man aboard sent the ’Bows on a run to the NCAA tournament. It remains their most recent visit.

As a mainland school administrator who has known Trapasso for a couple of decades has put it, “When his back is against the wall, he seems to be able to turn it on and ride it out.”

And his back was definitely against the Les Murakami Stadium fence entering this season. In 2019, the penultimate year of his most recent contract, the ’Bows went 20-30 (8-16 in the Big West), their worst finish in six years, meaning 2020 would be another down-to-the-wire call for the administration.

So, naturally, the ’Bows got off to a good start, going 11-6, before the spread of COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the remainder of the season.

To that point UH had gone 6-5 against opponents from Power 5 conferences, including a weekend in Nashville, Tenn., against defending national champion Vanderbilt that portended hope for a Big West campaign that was just around the corner.

Along the way, the ’Bows were 14th in the nation in home attendance, according to the NCAA, and the top draw in the west this side of Texas. An NCAA study this week listed the UH baseball team’s multi-year Academic Performance Rate at 979, ahead of the national average in the sport.

We’ll never know what a full season might have produced this year, of course. But it is clear that given UH’s start and the circumstances caused by the pandemic there was little or no appetite for a coaching change at UH. Or, much of anywhere else for that matter.

To date there have been only eight coaching changes in Division I baseball, less than a quarter of the number made the previous year.

With COVID-19 impacting their athletic programs on so many fronts, few administrators have had the time, energy or resources to devote to looking for new coaches. Not that there would have been much of a pool of experienced head coaching applicants anyway.

As it is at least two schools, Furman and Bowling Green, have dropped their baseball programs in recent weeks and others are considering it as an option.

At UH, however, baseball remains. As does its enduring coach.

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