Blair realizes dream as Kulanihakois 1st AD | News, Sports, Jobs

Rachael Blair, the athletic director of the newly opened Kulanihako‘i High School, is pictured Monday. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

KIHEI — Rachael Blair knew that when her decades-long dream of becoming an athletic director came to fruition with her first day on the job at Kulanihako’i High School on Monday, she had to hit the ground running.

Out of 21 applicants for the job, Blair was the choice of principal Halle Maxwell.

The two sat down in the shiny, new KHS administration building on Monday to discuss the future of athletics at the school that opened with 139 students in the ninth and 10th grades.

“This is a once-in-a-career opportunity to create something fresh and from scratch, to start something and to really want to make our community a better place by growing this school into what we want it to be,” Maxwell said. “And it’s an honor for all of us and the fact that we are bringing in someone as important as an athletic director who also feels that way, I think is so important.”

Blair, a state champion girls high school volleyball coach in Nevada and the former head girls volleyball coach at Maui High, said it has been a goal of hers to become an athletic administrator for more than a decade when she mentioned the thought to Jamie Yap, then her principal at Maui Waena Intermediate and now the principal at Maui High.

Blair has worked as a counselor at Haiku Elementary, Maui Waena and Silverado High School in Henderson, Nev., and was the student services coordinator at Maui High from 2008-12, when she was also the Sabers’ girls volleyball coach.

“It really is an honor to be selected as the first AD for Kulanihako’i High School,” Blair said. “Again, it’s a dream come true. It’s something I’m very passionate about in getting started, getting out there, getting busy on building this program from the ground up.

“We are building this program to offer an exceptional student-athlete experience that is going to complement the classroom learning and enhance the overall development of academics and athletics.”

Blair said academics will always come first for her.

“It’s important that our students know the importance of being a student first and an athlete second,” Blair said.

Kulanihako’i became the 15th member of the Maui Interscholastic League over the summer and Blair becomes the fourth current female AD in the MIL, joining Brandy Fronte at Haleakala Waldorf, Devon Andrada at Hana and Yacine Meyer at Seabury Hall.

Blair played collegiate volleyball herself at Humboldt State in California.

“I played for a coach and she inspired me because she was much older at the time, she was an older coach and she didn’t have the opportunity to be able to play women’s sports at that level,” Blair said. “I was able to play in college games in front of hundreds of people and she reminded us of that in the team huddle, that ‘you are very fortunate and to have gratitude for what you have as women.’

“So being a woman athlete, it’s really important that you continue to fight for all of those Title IX compliances and to be sure that we are providing all the same opportunities for women and men. … We want everyone to have the same opportunity in the future, so it’s really just an honor to do this position. Being a woman, yeah, it feels great.”

Blair added, “I take a lot of pride in being the athletic director. Being a woman, being a man, at the end of the day it’s doing the job right and making sure that you’re that role model for your coaches and your players, your student-athletes. So, making sure that you’re doing what’s right and that they’re learning the values of sportsmanship and teamwork, and an empathy, an understanding of what we’re all going through and that we’re all doing this together.

“When you do things together and you have that success and that motivation and that passion, great things happen.”

Maxwell said that Blair simply fit the vision for the brand-new school best in the end of a competitive process. Both women are moms to former youth baseball players and both live in South Maui near the new school.

“I think that Rachael, besides her really great experience as a coach and more importantly as a counselor, she shares the vision that I have of really caring for the whole child,” Maxwell said. “So keeping that student-athlete, the academic piece, the school piece, the school experience piece at the forefront, and then also enriching their school experience through athletics.

“She’s part of the community, so she also shares that vision for really creating that community partnership and becoming the center of the community through our athletic programs. So, it was an easy choice in that we share a lot of the same values around children and school and how we want to see them grow up.”

Blair said she will draw on her life experiences to lead the way for the Manta Rays program. This fall, they will play junior varsity girls volleyball, have cross country runners, air rifery shooters and a bowling team, a sport where Blair is in need of a coach. Other sports will be chosen based on interest among the small student body.

“It’s really exciting, I feel so honored to be selected and to be able, I feel, to share my life experience as a player, a college player, a coach, a counselor, a teacher,” Blair said. “I feel like I’ve been working my whole life to have this job. It’s a dream.”

Blair will have several tasks to fulfill as the journey develops on the mauka side of the North Kihei region. An on-campus gymnasium and football/track stadium are in future phase plans for the school that is built to ultimately accommodate 1,600 students.

“I live right across the street, so I have been waiting for this school to open, hoping that my own children were going to be able to go here,” Blair said — her sons are now 17 and 20 years old.

She recalled that fateful conversation with Yap from a decade ago.

“I was coaching and working with Jamie Yap as a counselor at Maui Waena and I remember having that conversation, that someday he wanted me to go into administration and I told him my dream was I want to be an athletic director and I’m going to do it for the new school one day,” Blair said. “That was like 10 years ago we had that conversation … It’s the perfect timing and I really, really wanted this position and I worked hard, really hard to just go in and drop my name in the hat.”

Football is slated to be added in the fall of 2024, at a level yet to be determined, ranging from eight-player to Division II to Division I.

“Dozens” of inquiries have been made about the football head coaching job and Blair is ready to take on that challenge, which is just a small check mark on her massive to-do list.

“I feel so blessed that I am a part of this community, this is my home,” she said. “I’ve worked at Maui Waena, I’ve worked at Haiku — I love those communities, they’re super special, but this is my home. This is my community, this is why I’m so happy to be able to build this athletic program from the ground up.

“What an honor to be at the start of a legacy of great things here.”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.

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