Don Botelho, standout athlete, dies at 93

Don Botelho, who made indelible marks on Hawaii sports for 60 years, died peacefully Saturday at a hospice facility, a person close to the family said.

Botelho was 93.

In 1955, Botelho played in one of the most storied University of Hawaii football games, and later, in the 1980s, coached the conglomerate Pac-Five team to two Oahu Prep Bowl championships.

His most lasting impact, though, might be in behind-the-scenes roles as leader of the state’s athletic directors and league administration. Botelho pushed forward the move to classification in Hawaii high school athletics, leveling the playing field in football and other sports.

After graduation from Roosevelt High School, Botelho served in the U,S. Coast Guard before enrolling at UH. He was one of the 28 Rainbows football players who flew to Lincoln, Neb., and pulled off what many still consider among the greatest upsets in college football history: a 6-0 road victory over the Huskers, on Sept. 17, 1955, 10 months after Nebraska beat UH, 50-0, at Honolulu Stadium.

As part of that team, Botelho was inducted into the UH Sports Circle of Honor in 2000.

“I didn’t start that game (at Nebraska), but quarterbacks kept getting hurt. So I end up in the game at halfback, a sophomore,” Botelho said in a 2009 Honolulu Star-Bulletin interview.

This was before players specialized on offense or defense, and Botelho was one of just two defensive backs as UH crowded the line of scrimmage to negate Nebraska’s size advantage.

“They ran the option and threw maybe three passes at the most,” Botelho said.

The Rainbows didn’t throw the ball much, either, in those days. But in 1957, when he was the starting quarterback, Botelho aired one out to Colin Chock that resulted in a 95-yard touchdown. It’s still a school record, on the same page as marks set decades later by Timmy Chang, Colt Brennan, Nick Rolovich and another quarterback Botelho knew very well — Garrett Gabriel.

Gabriel was the starting quarterback when the Pac-Five team that Botelho coached won the Oahu Prep Bowl in 1985.

The Wolfpack — a team comprised of players from up to eight small Interscholastic League of Honolulu schools — also won the Prep Bowl in 1982.

The team was originally called the HUMMers … because the players came from Hawaii Baptist, University, Maryknoll and Mid-Pacific (where Botelho was the athletic director).

“I saw him as a father figure and he was a great role model, a mild-mannered guy but so competitive. He believed in me as a person,” Gabriel said. “People thought it was an advantage, drawing athletes from different schools. But that school spirit is a real thing that we didn’t have. And when you think about all the work it took to bring it together, that takes a special kind of coach.”

Before his time at Mid-Pacific and Pac-Five, Botelho started the football program and was athletic director at underdog Damien, from 1965 to 1974.

Botelho also served for four years as an assistant coach at UH, which included the monumental task of helping his former teammate, Jimmy Asato, the new head coach, rebuild the program after there was no team in 1961.

Botelho retired from coaching in 2002 and became the Interscholastic League of Honolulu’s executive director in 2003, a post he held until 2015.

Even before then, Botelho was a key figure statewide in prep sports, as president of the Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association.

He ran the HIADA conventions each June, and was instrumental in pulling together various factions to agree on measures to classify teams, and create official state championships for football. Before 2000, there was just the Oahu Prep Bowl, played between the champions of the Oahu Interscholastic Association and the Interscholastic League of Honolulu.

“Because he was respected by everyone he was put in positions to make big decisions,” Gabriel said. “I never heard anyone every say anything negative about him.”

Botelho also served as the Hawaii High School Athletic Association’s football coordinator.

“Coach Bo may very well be the top high school coach and administrator we’ve ever had, in part because his illustrious career spanned several generations. He’s definitely part of the Mount Rushmore of high school administrator legends during my tenure,” said Keith Amemiya, who considered Botelho is most important mentor when he was head of the HHSAA from 1998 to 2009. “He was my mentor from the first day of my tenure at the HHSAA. I spoke with him daily for years. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

Information on services is pending.