UH Board of Regents accepts largest gift ever to benefit UH Manoa Athletics Department

BOR also approves policy amendment to lower ticket fees for certain UH Manoa sports

University of Hawaiʻi
Contact:
Carolyn Tanaka, (808) 956-8109
External Affairs & University Relations
Posted: May 30, 2008

KAPOLEI, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi — At its monthly meeting held this week, the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents (BOR) voted to accept a $5 million donation from the Clarence T. C. Ching Foundation to assist in the construction of an athletics complex on the makai campus of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In recognition of this historic gift, the new facility will be named the Clarence T. C. Ching Athletics Complex.

The gift will transform Cooke Field, which is UH Mānoa‘s only on-campus, all-purpose track and field, football, soccer and recreational facility, to more fully realize its potential as a center of student activity. As a first step to renewing the facility, UH has already invested nearly $2 million to upgrade lighting and the stands on the makai side of the field.

With the gift from the Clarence T. C. Ching Foundation and $1.2 million committed by the Legislature this past session, just $3 million more is required to create an excellent facility. It is anticipated that the investment made by the Clarence T. C. Ching Foundation will encourage others to make gifts in support of athletics and UH Mānoa.

In other action, amendments to BOR policy were approved relating to admission fees and charges to UH Mānoa athletic events. The amendments include the elimination of the minimum admission fees in the current BOR policy leaving only the maximums, which allows the Athletics Department to be free to reduce ticket prices at any time.

Also included was the creation of a family package for single game tickets for the sports of football, women‘s volleyball, men‘s basketball, and baseball, and the elimination of tiers three and four in football and tier three in women‘s volleyball and men‘s volleyball individual game ticket pricing leaving just two tiers for pricing of individual game tickets.