Big West Commissioner Welcomes Hawai'i	Mountain West Commissioner Welcomes Hawai'i

HONOLULU – The University of Hawai'i at Manoa, the state of Hawai'i's only Division I athletics program – begins a new era as its teams officially join the Mountain West Conference and Big West Conference, July 1, 2012, concluding a 33-year affiliation with the Western Athletic Conference.
 
The Warrior football team will compete in the Mountain West while the majority of UH's other sports – baseball, men's and women's basketball, women's cross country, men's and women's golf, men's and women's tennis, women's soccer, softball, outdoor track and field, women's volleyball, and women's water polo – begin play in the Big West. 
 
The men's and women's swimming and diving, indoor track and field, and men's volleyball teams will compete in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation while its coed and women's sailing teams remain in the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference.

UH is the Mountain West's lone football-only member and joins all-sport members Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Nevada, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV and Wyoming for the 2012-13 season. Beginning in 2013-14, former WAC rivals San Jose State and Utah State join the conference. In the Big West, UH will reunite old rivalries with several schools. This season, the conference will include Cal Poly, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Northridge, Long Beach State, Pacific, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, and UC Santa Barbara.

UH's first Mountain West game is Sept. 22 against Nevada at Hawaiian Airlines Field at Aloha Stadium. 
  
UH's admittance into the Mountain West marks just the second conference affiliation in the football program's history. Hawai'i entered the WAC in 1979, along with its other men's programs, and exited the conference as its senior member. On the other hand, joining the Big West is nothing new to Hawai'i. UH's women's sports were members of the conference for 12 seasons (1984-96) before joining its men's counterpart in the WAC in 1996.

The Warrior football team brings instant credibility to the Mountain West. UH became just the third team from a non-BCS conference to participate in a BCS bowl, when it played in the 2008 Allstate Sugar Bowl. The Warriors have been invited to seven bowl games in the last decade, including six appearances in the hometown Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl, which guarantees UH a spot with a winning record. Hawai'i's first season in the Mountain West coincides with Norm Chow's first year as head coach of the Warriors.

UH will help bolster the Big West's lineup. The perennial national power Rainbow Wahine volleyball team will renew rivalries with old foes Long Beach State, UC Santa Barbara, and Pacific. Head coach Dave Shoji's squads accumulated a 165-31 all-time record in Big West play with five regular season championships and 10 trips to the NCAA Tournament, including a 1987 national championship.
 
Before Bob Coolen's softball team became a national contender, the Rainbow Wahine captured a share of one Big West championship and made two NCAA Tournament appearances while members of the conference. Rainbow Wahine basketball captured two Big West titles and received five postseason invitations, including four to the Big Dance.
   
UH Athletics has a long and storied history which dates over 100 years. The then-College of Hawai'i fielded its first football team in 1909, two years after the school was founded. The school changed its name to the University of Hawai'i in 1920. UH became a member of the NCAA in 1946 and joined its first intercollegiate conference – the WAC – in 1979.
 
Before 1923, the school's teams were nicknamed the “Deans.” Then in the final game of the 1923 season, UH head coach Otto Klum's squad upset Oregon State, 7-0, at Mo'ili'ili Field during which a rainbow appeared over the gridiron. Reporters started calling UH teams the “Rainbows,” and the tradition began that Hawai'i would not lose a game if a rainbow appeared.
 
Currently, UH's men's teams use the nickname Warriors, a name that holds an honored place in Hawaiian history. Although it wasn't until 1974 that the UH football team adopted the nickname “Rainbow Warriors,” the use of the name goes back a number of years.
 
UH's women's teams are referred to as the Rainbow Wahine. The Hawaiian word Wahine is translated in English as woman. Rainbow Wahine Athletics celebrated its 40^th Anniversary during the 2011-12 academic season. The women's teams own five national team championships – women's volleyball (1979, '82, '83, '87) and sailing (2001) while UH women's athletes have captured seven national individual championships.