Jim Bolla enters his fifth season as head coach of the University of Hawai‘i women’s basketball program. In his fourth season, Bolla passed the 50-win mark while at UH and is now the second winningest coach in program history with 56 victories.
Bolla continues to bring talented players into the UH program and it has showed as the victories keep piling up. Entering his 19th year of coaching, Bolla has an outstanding record of 356-177.
This season, Bolla is excited to get back onto the court, as he signed his largest recruiting class since arriving at UH. The Rainbow Wahine will bring in six players, adding to nine returners, giving Bolla a core group to build around.
Since being hired as Hawai‘i’s head coach in July 2004, Bolla has returned the Rainbow Wahine back to its winning ways. Hawai‘i made a five-win improvement in Bolla’s first season and notched back-to-back winning seasons. In 2005-06, UH barely missed the postseason with an 18-10 record, recording the program’s first winning season in three years and the team’s highest win total since the 2001-02 campaign.
UH’s third-place finish in the Western Athletic Conference that year put league opponents on notice that the Rainbow Wahine were contenders once again, giving the team its highest WAC finish in four years.
Bolla began UH’s turnaround by instilling confidence in his young players. He made an impact right away, guiding the team to one of the program’s biggest wins ever in his first year when they defeated WAC power Louisiana Tech. It was UH’s first-ever win over the Lady Techsters in 15 all-time meetings and UH became just the third WAC team at the time to accomplish the feat.
The team continued its ascent in Bolla’s second year. Hawai‘i registered eight come-from-behind wins and went 7-3 on the road, including a pair of wins in its first non-conference road games in nearly a dozen years.
The 2006-07 campaign saw the Rainbow Wahine post its second straight winning season, earn a historic win at Louisiana Tech and lead the WAC in three statistical categories. The team again finished in the top tier of the conference standings.
Part of the reason for UH’s recent success has been the program’s expansive recruiting efforts. This year’s squad boasts recruits from six states and five foreign countries. Bolla has secured talents from both the junior-college ranks and high school level.
On the court, the former collegiate center has been instrumental in the development of UH’s post players. Under Bolla’s tutleage, Brittany Grice completed her career as a two-time all-WAC defensive player, while Tanya Smith earned all-WAC first-team honors in 2006-07 and all-WAC second team and all-WAC defensive team in 2007-08.
Off the court, the Rainbow Wahine have continued their hallmark of excellence in the classroom the last three years with more than a dozen all-WAC academic selections and also an all-district nod for Grice.
In his 30-plus years in collegiate athletics, Bolla has experienced the game at nearly every level. Bolla’s passion for basketball has been realized as a player, an assistant coach in both the men’s and women’s games, a co-head coach, head coach and a fund-raiser.
The sixth head coach in the history of UH women’s basketball arrived in Honolulu more than three years ago as a familiar face, having competed against the Rainbow Wahine for more than a decade as the head coach of the UNLV Lady Rebels, Hawai‘i’s former rival in the Big West Conference.
During his 14-year tenure at UNLV, from 1982-96, Bolla became the most successful coach in the program’s history with a record of 300-120 (.714). He led the Lady Rebels to nine postseason appearances, including seven NCAA Tournament bids, and guided his teams to 11 seasons – including nine consecutive – with 20 or more wins. Bolla led the school to its highest ranking ever during the 1989-90 season when the Lady Rebels climbed to second in the nation in both the AP and USA Today polls. The Lady Rebels finished that season with a 28-3 mark.
A three-time Big West Coach of the Year, Bolla produced six All-Americans, three conference players of the year and 24 all-conference selections. His teams won seven regular-season conference titles.
In 1996, Bolla stepped away from coaching to become the Director of Athletic Development at UNLV. As the chief fund-raiser, he generated more than $5 million for the UNLV Athletics Department, including a $3.1 million gift for the softball and golf programs.
A native of Pittsburgh, Pa., Bolla was a former standout on the University of Pittsburgh basketball team. He was the starting center for the 1973-74 squad that rose to national prominence with a 22-game winning streak, a Top-10 national ranking and a postseason run that fell just one victory shy of the NCAA Final Four. Bolla graduated from Pittsburgh in 1976 with a B.S. in physical education.
Upon graduation, Bolla served as an assistant for the Pitt men’s basketball squad from 1976-79 and helped the school’s women’s basketball program to a national ranking as an assistant coach during the 1979-80 season.
Bolla is a charter member of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and former chairman of WBCA’s Male Coaches Committee. He served in the UNLV Faculty Senate and made community service a priority as head coach. While at UNLV, he introduced “Meet the Lady Rebel Night,” a mentoring program which paired prominent women in the community with current players.
Bolla and his wife, the former Dallas Boychuk, have been married for eight years and have a 7-year-old daughter, Sasha. Boychuk is the former head women’s basketball coach at Long Beach State where she coached for eight seasons (1995-2003).
