Can you talk about a season in the past that you remember the most from your time at HPA?
I think there are a couple that come to mind. One was the 2013-2014 season. That was a pretty high watermark in terms of work ethic and desire to do well and excel. It was a really intense group of athletes that I always think about when I’m planning things now.
And then, of course, the 2014-2015 season was coming off of that year,the kids that came up in that group of seniors’ shadow. And then they had to carry on and the girls did something historically we’d never done before. They won the fifth BIIF title. And then probably the other one, the third one, is the 2022 season. Because for most of it, we couldn’t be in our own wrestling room because of COVID restrictions. But we were determined to have a season. We moved the mats up to the Atherton garage and every single day we would lay out a giant 60-by-40 tarp in the parking lot up there. We made it work for 2/3 of the season until finally, we got the okay to move back into the room. But that was also a great sign of the determination of this sport. Even though we couldn’t even use our practice space, we were going to find a way.
What is your favorite part of being a coach HPA? What’s the best thing about this whole program that sets you apart?
For athletics in general, I think athletics are a really important part of the student high school experience. I think the work, being a part of a team coming together to achieve a common goal and learning adversity in an environment. Wrestling is truly a healthy sport to do mentally and physically, of course. I know every coach really thinks a great deal about their sport, as I do all the time. Without a doubt, I believe that wrestling as a sport has the opportunity to change a person’s life, because you have to change your mindset so much to excel at it. But I just think like the mental aptitude that it takes for wrestling and how one can succeed at wrestling, the rest of your life is going to be easy because of it.
And can you tell us how you became a coach?
I came back to work here. The coach at the time was trying to retire and he knew that I had wrestled in high school. So he told Athletic Director Steve Perry that I had to come and help him. So for two years, I worked under him. He retired and I got the job and that’s how it worked out.
What should someone expect when they’re joining wrestling? What’s some like expectations that they should kind of think about and the ideals that you hold as a coach?
So you should expect you’re going to have to work hard. You know, I have quotes up in the wrestling room but also I remember a time when Athletic Director Mr. Perry said to the whole school at an all-school assembly, that wrestling is out there working harder than everybody every day. And that’s a big part of our ethos. We have a lot of fun that comes with the work we do. We are a social group for sure. So many really close friends on the wrestling team and a lot of that is bonding over the hard work we put in.
What are some of the core values that you’ve instilled with your coaching? Because I know you hold HPA’s core values very near and dear.
There are two main ones. One is the pursuit of excellence. And again, I think the phrasing of that is important. Pursuit of excellence, not necessarily excellence, right? Like the point is to be striving to do your best so that pursuit is noble in and of itself, regardless of the outcome of the matches.
And then the other one that’s just so fundamental to the sport of wrestling, in every regard, is respect. You need to respect your opponent. You need to respect the rules, you need to respect everyone’s safety. We’re a mixed-gender team. So there’s a lot of respect that needs to happen in that regard. Every wrestling match begins and ends the same way. There’s a handshake, which is an important sign of perspective.
What about that 2015 season was so magical? I heard the team had to win a championship to complete the mural in the wrestling room?
So that mural was started actually in 1987. And funnily enough, I was born in 1987. So that mural has been up since I was born. And when they were painting it back then the US stopped them and said, We’re not finishing it until we went to team title. And he passed that down from coach to coach to coach. And then I think what made that team so special is that group of girls in particular, were so invested in each other’s success. In wrestling ultimately you compete as an individual. You have to be intrinsically motivated for yourself. It’s unlike football where the linemen go over that part of the field in practice, the punters and the kickers go over there, the receivers go over there and everybody’s trying to perfect their role, right? With wrestling, it’s like a big inversion of that, where you have to stand entirely on your own on match day. But you need your team so much for every minute of practice, because of your wrestling partner, your drill partner. And if practice isn’t pushing you and isn’t challenging you, you’re not getting better.
Those girls, they pushed each other so hard every day and absolutely invested in not taking it easy on each other. They weren’t mean to each other. Just like if somebody had a weakness, they were going to drill them on it until they got better at it. With the team points, we barely won that team title. We only had eight girls on the team under 14 weight classes. And if one of those girls had come in one place lower than she did, we wouldn’t have won. So every single one of them was instrumental in winning the title.
Who do you draw inspiration from as a coach and who do you look up to as an individual?
Well, recently, he’s a fictional character but I’ve realized how much my own personal philosophies align with Ted Lasso. He always says that it’s not about the wins and losses, the winning is great, but it’s not why we do it. We do it because we love and live for this sport.
Who is your favorite wrestler?
Ultimately, the answer is Dan Gable, if you Google famous US Wrestlers, Dan Gable will come up somewhere. He is such a legendary figure in this sport. But the thing that I reflected on a lot was watching this documentary about him. He competed in the US Olympics and won many Gold Medals over the years. He coached at Iowa and other state schools. As he grew older he could only walk around in crutches and would help wrestlers verbally and even get on his hands and knees to help. Even though Gable had a hard time moving around as he got older, he never stopped truly to help other young wrestlers succeed. It was just really powerful to watch that happen.
What’s something that you hope for the most for HPA wrestling and what is something that you can look forward to in the future?
Aspirationally, I would love to find more people on our staff who can be a part of their coaching staff because I would love for us to have enough human resources to start a real feeder program at like Lower and Middle school level.
Club programs on Oahu and Maui are part of what sets those high school programs apart because they have kids who have been wrestling for years. Where we’ve got four years Something I’m proud of to the fact that we do as well as we do with a team that’s almost always 50% or more first-year wrestlers.
I’d like to point out who the coaching staff is. So there’s myself class of 2005. And when I was a senior, Robert Ching, started to come around. He started to show up and help out a bit. He’s still around and have had some kids in the program. His son Josh, class of 2014, was on the coaching staff. Then coach Alo, class of 2015, is on the coaching staff. And then Elijah on Nicola Buckley, who was on whose class of 2017
So we have four alumni and a parent of two and that’s our coaching staff. And to me, that says a lot about the enduring experience of wrestling. The people that are around that were part of that team, part of that program., they want to stay involved, they come back they want to coach because that room is the temple and everyone on that coaching staff has invested an enormous amount of literal blood, sweat and tears into that space. And they’re excited to come and give that back to the next group. So to me, that’s really special.