IRVINE, Calif. – On September 25, 2000, Western Washington President Karen Morse wrote a letter to six of the PacWest’s 16 schools, informing them that the other 10 schools intended to secede from the PacWest at the following week’s meeting of the athletic directors, leaving BYU-Hawaii, Chaminade, Hawai`i Hilo, Hawai`i Pacific, Montana State Billings and Western New Mexico to pick up the pieces.
 
After a week of negotiations over the phone, the athletic directors from the 16 PacWest members and Commissioner Woody Hahn met at the Sea-Tac Marriott on October 2, 2000. The meeting lasted only a few minutes with all 16 schools voting unanimously to allow the 10 to leave the conference with their fines being forgiven, and to allow the remaining six to keep the PacWest name, logo, and NCAA status.
 
Though the meeting was over, the six members that made up the drastically redefined PacWest stayed in Seattle to plot the course of the future for these institutions. Montana State Billings Athletic Director Gary Gray wrote a summary of that meeting which he faxed to the presidents of the six remaining schools. Apparently, even on the Sunday before the official vote, the six schools met privately to begin the work of planning for the future.
 
Gray wrote this letter “concerning the continuation and future direction of the Pacific West Conference.” Though the conference had made a radical change in its membership, it still had the same commissioner and six schools that had already been placed into the same division, so the six athletic directors saw this as a “continuation” of a conference that had existed since 1992.
 
Gray was joined in the meeting by Randy Day (BYUH), Aaron Griess (Chaminade), Kathleen McNally (UHH), Tony Sellitto (HPU) and Scott Woodard (WNMU). Together, those six athletic directors made a lot of progress in those two days, drafting schedules for men’s basketball and volleyball. They also briefly discussed a year-end softball tournament that was similar in format to what today is the Desert Stinger.
 
They spoke about men’s and women’s tennis since all six schools sponsored both sports, but decided not to hold a tournament. In cross country, Western New Mexico was the only school which didn’t sponsor the sport, so they encouraged the Mustangs to add men’s and women’s cross country. They also discussed in passing golf and soccer. “We agreed that it is important for us to develop as many conference sports as are feasible within our own budgets,” Gray said in his letter.
 
The meeting also covered important topics like the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, the commissioner’s contract, NCAA grant applications, conference marketing plan, and even participation in regional and national committees. Gray finished his summary of the meeting by talking about what he could do to “keep the ball rolling,” suggesting that he could fly with his volleyball team to Hawai`i to meet with the presidents, chancellors and athletic directors from the four Hawai`i schools.
 
Two weeks later, Gray wrote to the presidents and chancellors again to tell them he would be on the islands on October 25-29. During that time, he met with each of the presidents and continued to chart forward the path of the PacWest.
 
Throughout his correspondence, Gray struck an intentionally positive note, helping to change the mood after the shock of 10 schools breaking off. In his letter on October 16, he said “Now that we have all weathered the initial surprise of the upcoming departure of 10 Pacific West Conference member institutions, it’s time to begin a lot of work to solidify our continuing Pacific West Conference with six great member institutions.”
 
In his letter two weeks earlier, he concluded by saying “Thank you very much for everyone’s hard work, dedication, and commitment to each of the six continuing members of the Pacific West Conference. I know we’ll do a great job, and I know we’ll be very successful. I am looking forward to the stimulating challenge.” There was also a section titled “Our Bright Future,” in which Gray spoke of “charting a direction for the future.”

Though progress was being made quickly and the conference was keeping its NCAA status, serious challenges still awaited the PacWest. The most obvious was that two of the schools were four time zones away from the other four members, and even those two schools were over 1,000 miles apart from each other. The second key challenge that the PacWest faced was women’s basketball.
 
Throughout the PacWest’s history, women’s basketball has been central to its biggest changes. Even the very creation of the conference was due in no small part to the need of Continental Divide Conference to have enough women’s basketball member institutions. Then when that number slipped below six in the mid-1990s, that drove the expansion which saw 10 new members join the conference in a span of just two years. Now with only six members, it became imperative that every member have a women’s basketball team, but none of the Hawai`i schools sponsored women’s basketball at that time. Volleyball on the islands had always been viewed as the female counterpart to men’s basketball.
 
At MSU Billings, women’s basketball was a premier sport, so convincing the Hawai`i schools to add women’s basketball became a key objective for Commissioner Woody Hahn. In 2002-03, the Yellowjackets put together a schedule with travel that spanned every corner of the United States except Maine. In order to help convince the Hawai`i schools to add women’s basketball, MSU Billings hosted a January tournament at BYU-Hawaii before making trips to New Mexico, Florida and even Puerto Rico in order to qualify for the West Regional in Seattle. The next year, the Yellowjackets added San Diego and Alaska to their itinerary, and Western New Mexico was forced into playing similar schedules.
 
After the four years of surviving as a six-team conference, the women’s basketball scheduling woes eventually forced MSU Billings and Western New Mexico to look elsewhere for a more reasonable schedule, finding a home in the Heartland Conference in 2005-06.
 
The departure of the two mainland schools dropped the PacWest’s membership below the minimum six members. The four Hawai`i schools appealed to the NCAA for a waiver in order to keep the official status of the conference, but the PacWest was stripped of its automatic bids into the postseason until it could add two new members to the conference.
 
While being limited to just four members without automatic bids, the PacWest still was present on the regional scene in the postseason. During the 2005-06 season, Hawai`i Pacific and BYU-Hawaii both qualified for regionals in volleyball and Chaminade qualified in men’s basketball, beating Alaska Anchorage in the first round. However, getting back to the minimum of six conference members became the No. 1 priority for Commissioner Hahn.
 
Grand Canyon was one of the PacWest’s seven charter members in 1992, but the ‘Lopes left the PacWest after only two years to join the California Collegiate Athletic Association. Grand Canyon began to experience financial troubles, and decided in 2003 to leave the CCAA to return to the NAIA. However, after resigning membership in the CCAA and before being fully accepted into the NAIA, Grand Canyon transitioned into a for-profit university, causing the NAIA to refuse entry to Grand Canyon.
 
Grand Canyon then asked the CCAA if it could rescind the resignation of membership and remain in the conference. However, the CCAA presidents preferred to move forward with only public schools located in California, leaving Grand Canyon in limbo, starting with the 2004-05 season. The ‘Lopes began to schedule games that year against PacWest schools, which evolved into full membership in the conference in the summer of 2006.
 
At the same time, Notre Dame de Namur decided to begin its transition from the NAIA to NCAA Division II. The Argonauts considered membership in all three of the West Region conferences. When Grand Canyon exited the CCAA, the conference was made up of only California State and University of California schools, and its presidents wanted to keep it that way. Similarly for the GNAC, Humboldt State had just left for the CCAA, leaving that conference without a presence in California. Meanwhile, the PacWest was eager to bring in a sixth member, so Notre Dame de Namur accepted the invitation to be the sixth member.
 
After the one-year hiatus, the PacWest was back to the minimum number of six conference members, having four in Hawai`i and two on the mainland. However, the PacWest could not reapply for official NCAA status until NDNU achieved active member status and the conference reached a minimum of 10 sponsored sports. Notre Dame de Namur was only the third school from California to join the PacWest after Sacramento State and Humboldt State both had short stints in the conference.
 
In order to reach the minimum of 10 conference sports, all four Hawai`i schools added women’s basketball for the 2006-07 season with Grand Canyon winning the first title with a 15-0 record in conference play. The PacWest also sponsored men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, softball, women’s tennis and men’s golf for that first year of the restart.
 
“I worked my tail off to get us to six schools, so that we could try to get our automatic berth back,” Commissioner Hahn said, reflecting on the PacWest’s rebuild. “I visited Notre Dame de Namur and Grand Canyon to recruit them to join the conference. That was when the Hawai`i schools decided to add women’s basketball. Prior to that, we couldn’t get them to add women’s basketball, which is why the mainland schools had split in the first place.”
 
The PacWest continued to grow with Commissioner Hahn adding Tom Di Camillo, originally from West Chester University, as the conference’s sports information director. Di Camillo was charged with creating a new PacWest website. Click here to see the complete history of the PacWest website.

The PacWest also recruited Dixie State to join the PacWest as it transitioned from a junior college to a four-year college. The then-named Rebels traveled to Hawai`i during the 2006-07 season for men’s and women’s basketball before officially becoming members in the summer of 2007. At that time, Commissioner Hahn made known his intention to fully retire after serving as commissioner for 19 years, including 15 since the creation of the PacWest.
 
Hawai`i Pacific President Chatt G. Wright, shortly after Commissioner Hahn’s retirement said “Woody provided the management experience and leadership for this conference for 15 years, and everyone who is now or has been a part of the PacWest Conference is indebted to Woody for all of his efforts in creating one of the most diverse and successful intercollegiate athletic conferences.”
 
Reflecting on the one-year hiatus in a conference update, Di Camillo wrote “Although not officially recognized by the NCAA that year, the perseverance by Chaminade, BYU-Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific and Hawaii Hilo kept the core of a proud tradition intact until the three new schools put the league back on the Division II map. And it is a big map.”
 
Commissioner Hahn went to his final PacWest meetings in Hawai`i in May of 2007 where President Wright introduced Bob Hogue as the second commissioner in the PacWest’s history. Commissioner Hogue was announced publicly in a press conference on July 16, 2007. The PacWest title read “Bob Hogue chosen as next commissioner of Pac West Conference; Takes over full-time duties at growing NCAA II league; Replaces retiring Woody Hahn.” Click here to see the original announcement.
 
Like his predecessor, Commissioner Hogue was a pitcher during his days as a collegiate athlete. He threw for two years at the University of Southern California, and then became a sportscaster in locations throughout the United States before settling in Hawai`i. He interrupted his time as Hawai`i’s top sports anchor to give local politics a try as a state senator in Hawai`i, while he also coached his daughters in basketball.
 
When Commissioner Hogue joined the PacWest, the conference had seven members and 10 sponsored sports. Before the start of his first fall season, Commissioner Hogue wrote “We are about to embark on a great season of athletic competition in the Pacific West Conference. I hope you are as excited as I am. We should all be proud to be part of the PacWest, a conference as diverse as it is geographically large… Our biggest goal this year should be to work as a conference to make sure all seven of our schools are on active status at this time next season.” That first commissioner’s report was published on the PacWest’s new website.
 
The PacWest achieved that goal in the first year with Notre Dame de Namur and Dixie State gaining active NCAA Division II member status. With seven fully approved NCAA members and 10 sports, the PacWest met all requirements to regain its automatic bids, but the NCAA rules required a two-year waiting period before they would be granted. Commissioner Hogue applied in the summer of 2008 for that requirement to be waived for the PacWest.
 
The NCAA Division II Championships Committee and the Management Council both recommended that the PacWest’s request be denied. However, the Presidents’ Council overruled that recommendation and granted an exception to the rule, making the PacWest full NCAA Division II members for the second time.
 
“In the same meeting that I was introduced as the new commissioner, the chair of the Presidents’ Council and NCAA Division II Vice President Mike Racy were also in attendance,” Commissioner Hogue said. “They told us that it was part of their strategic plan to expand in the West and strengthen its membership. I always felt that those key individuals drove the conversation at the NCAA level. It wasn’t so much what we did, but that they saw that our request aligned with their strategic plan at the time.”
 
Commissioner Hogue was working on recruiting new members on the mainland to join the PacWest, while the Presidents’ Council made its decision. The final decision was made when he was on a plane back to Honolulu.
 
“As soon as the plane landed, I dialed my phone to see if I had any messages,” Commissioner Hogue said. “I had one from Mike Racy letting me know that the Presidents’ Council had just voted to supersede the recommendation of the Management Council and Championships Committee and grant us the automatic qualifiers. He told me the Presidents’ Council said it was ‘the right thing to do.’ I remember being incredibly excited while standing in the middle aisle of the airplane to be a full member conference.”

PACWEST ANNOUNCEMENT ON REGAINING AUTOMATIC BIDS (Aug. 7, 2008)
 
Along with regaining full NCAA status, Commissioner Hogue’s second main goal was to continue adding new members and sports to the conference. His effort to bring in new members saw him flying over 100,000 miles in his first year as commissioner, including one trip to Canada to meet with the University of British Columbia.
 
Academy of Art and Dominican represented more realistic additions to the PacWest’s membership with the conference already having a presence in the Bay Area with Notre Dame de Namur. Josh Doody was the athletic director of NDNU, and he told Commissioner Hogue of the interest of the two schools in joining the conference. Academy of Art was looking to add athletics for the first time, and Dominican was becoming too strong for the California Pacific Conference in the NAIA.
 
Academy of Art faced a unique challenge since, at the time, NCAA Division II had no rule on the books for schools that were starting an athletics program from scratch. The membership committee quickly developed a policy that schools could not apply for NCAA Division II membership until they had competed for a full year. During that year, Academy of Art competed in a PacWest schedule as unofficial members of the conference, and won an individual title in men’s cross country, but was not eligible yet for team titles.
 
“I remember hearing that ART U was interested, so I contacted Jamie Williams, who had become the AD,” Commissioner Hogue recalled. “He had so much energy that to meet him is to be overwhelmed with enthusiasm and passion. He had just one employee at the time when we met in a small temporary office at the top of a building in downtown San Francisco. He told me all their plans to start an athletic program and have all sorts of sports.”
 
On March 10, 2008, Dr. Jamie Williams accepted the PacWest’s offer for Academy of Art to become the eighth member of the conference as the Urban Knights added intercollegiate athletics. Click here to see the full announcement. A month later, Dominican was announced as the newest addition to the PacWest. In his announcement, Bob Hogue explained “Dominican’s proximity to both NDNU and Academy of Art University helps balance the league in terms of scheduling. Travel partners are now more geographically feasible with four schools in Hawai`i, three in the Bay Area, and two schools in the Southwest.” Click here to see the full announcement.
 
Baseball was one of the sports that Academy of Art sponsored, and a few years earlier, Hawai`i Hilo moved its program from the Division I ranks into Division II along with all its other sports. That made baseball the PacWest’s 11th sport with its first season being held in 2010, which Hawai`i Pacific won.
 
Prior to officially becoming a conference sport, baseball was already an important part of the conference’s identity. “As a young boy, I remember hearing about the triple-A baseball Little World Series in the 1950s and 60s,” Hogue said. “I knew that our four baseball teams weren’t the only ones that were geographically challenged in NCAA Division II, so I conjured up the idea of a Little World Series with the independent schools in Puerto Rico.”
 
In 2009, the PacWest hosted the Little World Series in St. George, Utah. Dixie State won the tournament, defeating Grand Canyon twice to secure the title. While the tournament was never held again, that event served as the launching pad to make baseball a PacWest sport the following year.
 
After having just four members for the 2005-06 season, the PacWest was back to full strength as an official NCAA conference with nine member institutions and 11 sports in the fall of 2009. The conference was reborn with schools from Chaminade whose membership in the conference predates the name PacWest and newest addition Dominican. The PacWest was set to embark on its second chapter of existence. Tying the two chapters together, the first PacWest Magazine was published in 2008. While looking back in celebration of each of the national champions in the PacWest’s history up to that point, it also looked ahead to the “bright future” that Gary Gray wrote about eight years earlier.
 
The final installment of the series on the PacWest history will be released on August 11, which will take a deep dive into the conference’s expansion into Southern California and remember 30 years of success for the conference on both the regional and national stage.
 
Acknowledgements: A number of people were helpful in compiling the information for this history. Thank you to the following people for taking the time to talk over the phone and share stories of their memories from the last 30 years of the PacWest history: Keith Baker (Grand Canyon), Jon Carey (Western Oregon), Josh Doody (Notre Dame de Namur), Joey Estrella (Hawai`i Hilo), Gary Gray (Montana State Billings), Bob Guptil (PacWest), Woody Hahn (PacWest), Richard Hannan (GNAC), Ethan Hamilton (Point Loma), Bob Hogue (PacWest), Dexter Irvin (Dixie State & Hawai`i Hilo), Mike Lund (Portland State), Frank MacDonald (Seattle Pacific), Keith Phillips (Seattle Pacific), Gary Pine (Azusa Pacific), Dave Porter (BYU-Hawaii), Ken Wagner (BYU-Hawaii)