It wasn't too long ago when University of Hawai'i-Manoa men's golf coach Ronn Miyashiro wasn't sure if he should bother attending the athletic department's annual scholar-athlete breakfast.

" 'It would be nice for you to go and support your team like the other coaches,' " Serenda Valdez, assistant director of student affairs, remembers telling him one year.

"(But) I don't have anyone that's invited," Valdez said Miyashiro answered forlornly.

This morning when the school honors athletes for academic performance, Miyashiro has a reason to attend and a success story to talk about.

From the team grade point average of 1.98 (on a 4.0 scale) that was at the bottom of the athletic department when he took over the team in January 1998, the Rainbows have improved to a team 3.02, highest among the male teams for the fall, according to UH officials. It is fourth among UH's 18 teams overall.

Seven of the nine players on the team had at least a 3.0 for the fall semester and two, Ryan Perez and Cody Pewarchuk, will be among the 112 honored today for having 3.0 or better cumulative GPAs for their stay at UH. Pewarchuk, who hopes to go to dental school, has a 4.0 GPA, Miyashiro said.

And all eight players that he has recruited and who have completed their eligibility have graduated, Miyashiro said.

This comes despite golf being a two semester sport, its participants missing 25 to 30 class days a year and the four-hour plus chunks of the day that a round of practice can take. All of which were once allowed to take their toll.

Miyashiro credits his players' discipline and time management, the department's academic staff and a change in recruiting for the turnaround.

When Miyashiro, a UH graduate, took over, he was 23 and the youngest head coach in school history. But old enough to know the score. "When I came in and saw how drastic that GPA was I knew I'd better bring it up — or I (was) going to get fired," Miyashiro said. "That was pretty embarrassing to be under a 2.0."

Much of the change boiled down to who was being recruited and the attitudes they packed in their bags. "We had some players on the squad that didn't care about academics; didn't care about good grades," Miyashiro said. "We brought in people who were serious about academics and the educational side of the college experience."

Since then, Miyashiro said, "our (team) grade point average has come up almost every quarter."

Steadily, academic performance is becoming par for the course in UH men's golf.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.