You evaluate athletes by the plays they make. Coaches are rated on the games they win.

Athletic directors?

Their reputations rise — or fall — on the impact of the coaches hired.

Which means University of Hawai'i athletic director Jim Donovan is, as they say, on the clock now as the first two hires of his tenure come up.

With UH currently advertising for a men's volleyball coach and a women's basketball coach, we'll soon have the first read on Donovan's ability to hire. Narrowing budget deficits, filling schedules and negotiating contracts are important, of course, but most visible are coaching hires.

For somebody barely 13 months into the job, that's quite an opportunity actually. Generally, turnover at UH has been less frequent than the national averages. For example, Donovan's predecessor, Herman Frazier, was at the school five years and had two so-called marquee hires: a men's basketball coach (Bob Nash) and a women's basketball coach (Jim Bolla).

Search committees and the like, which are largely hand-picked by the AD, are one thing. Ultimately, it is the AD who makes the call and lives with the choice.

This will be especially true in Donovan's case since these two openings figure to have something to say about reducing the net $5.4 million deficit UH has accumulated over the past five years. Men's volleyball has run at a profit in the past but was $273,847 in the hole in the most recent (2007-08) auditor's report and the new coach will be charged with making the program competitive enough to get back on the plus side.

Women's basketball, which has never been profitable, should, at least, lower the tide of $816,362 in red ink it wallowed in for the 2007-08 fiscal year, according to the audit, and the nearly $1 million it is projected to hit in the current fiscal year. Its new coach will be asked to boost the meager $19,529 in ticket sales Rainbow Wahine basketball took in during the just-completed season.

To be sure, Donovan's predecessors have had their hits — and misses. For example, Stan Sheriff hired Bob Wagner, Riley Wallace and Vince Goo. But also had Frank Arnold. Hugh Yoshida had June Jones but also Fred vonAppen.

During his tenure as an assistant and associate athletic director at UH (1994-2002), Donovan did not make the call but under Yoshida did have roles in the hiring of Jones and vonAppen along with baseball coach Mike Trapasso among others.

This time the calls are all Donovan's and what he does with them will provide the best test yet of his administration.

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