Hawaii baseball coach Mike Trapasso said he is bracing for potential changes to the 2021 schedule because of the pandemic’s impact on college-athletic budgets.

In pre-pandemic times, Trapasso would try to book opponents a few years in advance while allowing the flexibility for cancellations.

“I always talk about the week of July 1 when my phone rings from teams we have scheduled coming out,” Trapasso said. “That’s the beginning of the new fiscal year. And that’s when the (athletic directors) walk into the baseball coach’s office and say, ‘hey, we’ve just got our budget for next year, and you’re not going to be able to go to Hawaii.’ That happens every year. We can anticipate that being even more so the case this year for the 2021 (season) than maybe in previous years. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It’s definitely something I think will happen, and we’ll have to address it.”

Trapasso said he is crafting just-in-case responses. Last year, Trapasso scrambled to find replacements when Penn State and Creighton canceled deals to play in Hawaii this past season.

“It’s part of what we have to do,” Trapasso said. “You can panic if you want, but when you get over it, you’re still in the same situation you were in when you started panicking. It really doesn’t do you a lot of good to panic. And you can’t panic this year if somebody cancels on you. It’s a year that’s been unlike any in college athletics, not just college baseball. We have to really prepare for it and not panic. When problems arise, we have to work the problem as best we can.”

Cal State Bakersfield and UC San Diego begin Big West membership this coming academic year. Both additions will increase UH’s league games to 22, easing the number of nonconference series to fill. UH recently booked Utah for the Big West bye week in May 2021. Trapasso said it has been a “rarity” to fill a Big West bye late in the season.

“Hopefully, that stays,” Trapasso said. “We’ll have to see what happens.”

In anticipation of financial constraints, Trapasso has proposed adjustments to the ’Bows’ travel budget for the 2021 season. “Just by making certain adjustments, I was able to cut our travel budget by almost $70,000,” Trapasso said.

Trapasso also is checking on future commitments. Vanderbilt, the 2019 national champion, not only will honor a commitment to play in Hawaii in 2022, it asked to add a game to make it a four-game series.

“I’m not worried about ’22 right now, I’m worried about ’21,” Trapasso said. “We’re anticipating schedule changes because it just makes sense to plan for the unexpected. … I think right now, the right course of action is to be patient. We’ve had situations where we haven’t filled our schedule until the fall, and that’s what I anticipate. This is something that will have to go into late summer or early fall to resolve.”