As a former high school baseball head coach at Saint Louis and Mililani, Dean Sato knows first-hand the value of assistants.

"You can't do it alone, there's no way," Sato said. "Without assistant coaches, there would be no program."

That is why Sato's Champion Edge Foundation has decided to contribute $4,000 toward coaches' stipends at Radford, where he conducts baseball clinics on Sundays. The contribution will be made in conjunction with the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association's "SOS" (Save Our Sports) campaign designed to help public high school athletic departments offset recent state budget cuts that left them operating with less than 64 percent of their 2008-2009 allocations.

The SOS Fund's running total of $1,322,348 surpasses the original goal of raising $1.2 million when the campaign began on July 28, but still falls several hundred thousand dollars short when factoring in a $700,000-plus reduction in allocations for coaches' stipends.

Radford athletic director Kelly Sur said he has had to eliminate about 25 assistant coaching positions this school year as a result of the budget cuts.

"And if you lose too many coaches, it can create a dangerous situation if you don't have enough supervision," Sur said. "Either that, or you have to cut kids to bring the numbers down."

Sato said he hopes the Champion Edge contribution helps send a two-fold message.

"What we're trying to do in training the younger kids is show them the importance of academics and life lessons," Sato said. "Radford is helping us a lot by letting us use their field to run our clinics, so our promise is to help them pay their coaches. We all coach for the love of the game and the kids, but they need to be compensated somehow. As it was, their compensation could hardly fill a tank of gas."

Sato said he hopes the contribution also will serve as an example of how schools and the community can partner up to serve each other's needs.

"We hope to set the tone as far as how (the community and school) can work together on use of facilities," Sato said. "If we can help the school, then by all means we'll try to help them with the little things."

The Champion Edge Foundation previously used Kaimukí High School's field, which it helped refurbish last year.

At Radford, Champion Edge has contributed by donating baseballs and bats and a batting practice "L" screen.

"They helped us with re-roofing our (supply) shed, and later we want to put a roof on our batting cage," Sur said. "The public needs to understand that athletics has never been fully funded, so (Champion Edge) have helped us a lot and we really appreciate it."

This past week's SOS contributions include a $100,000 gift from the James and Abigail Campbell Family Foundation.

The SOS Fund eventually will be turned over to the state's Department of Education, which will then distribute it to Hawai'i's 55 public high school athletic departments based on a formula that accounts for the size of each program and amount of student participation.

To contribute to the SOS Fund, make a check payable to "HHSAA SOS Account" and send it to HHSAA, P.O. Box 62029, Honolulu, HI 96839, or visit www.sportshigh.com

Read his blog on high school sports at http://preptalk.honadvblogs.com