He admits it can be a challenge these days, engaging high school or junior high school kids into turning out for the wrestling team.
“It’s funny, but at the same time, it’s frustrating,” said Keith Laeha, a retired captain from the Fire Department who has spent a lifetime involved with the sport of wrestling. “I would see these kids and I’d try to talk to them about wrestling, I’d be trying to encourage them to give it a shot.
“They were very skeptical,” he said. “They’ve watched professional wrestling and they thought it was somehow like that; they didn’t want to go out there and get body slammed.”
If you needed another indictment on the damage television can do to young minds, there you go. There are no masks, no tag teams, no body slams or eye gouges. Nobody gets thrown into the ropes and takes a clothesline shot to the throat on the rebound. Oh yeah, there are no ropes, no ring, either.
Real wrestling isn’t flashy like that, it’s technical and doesn’t require beefed-up show bodies like we once saw on television.
Laeha knows wrestling from the inside out, born into a family of athletes who wrestled, including an older brother who encouraged him to give it a try.
The fact that he had a natural introduction to the sport may or may not have increased the appeal, but it didn’t take long for Laeha to become deeply immersed into the sport, deeper, we can suggest, than just about anyone else in the country this year.
Laeha was recently named the national assistant wrestling coach of the year, and if it seems it’s too bad he couldn’t be a head coach, that’s where you get to know Keith Laeha.
He was a head coach, for a time at Kamehameha-Kapalama where he graduated in 1977, but it was the wrestling instruction that moved him, not the title.
“I never wanted to deal with the meetings, the paperwork, the school board discussions and all that,” he said last week. “I just wanted to coach these kids, see if I could help them improve.”
Apart from the administrative duties, Laeha was attached to his job with the fire department, which changed his job site over the years. He coached at Waiakea, Honokaa, Kamehameha-Hawaii and other stops along the way, always a result of the job being moved. Everyone knew about him, they all welcomed him to their coaching staffs.
“We always used to have football players turning out (at KSK), but that doesn’t happen nearly as much anymore,” he said. “In football, you always have teammates to rely on, to work with, but here, it’s all about you, it’s all about learning how to use your strength and leverage.”
Laeha is among those who don’t understand why the message of the benefits of wrestling doesn’t seem to filter down to junior high and high school players. In football, college and pro coaches often search backgrounds, looking for wrestling experience when they seek to add lineman. A remarkable percentage of NFL free agent linemen signed after the draft are players who have wrestled.
“They have a couple things going for them,” Laeha said of football players with wrestling backgrounds. “(Coaches) know they’re tough guys who won’t back away from a competitive situation, that they are guys who won’t shy away from work, but they also know these guys understand leverage and that’s a huge priority in football.”
It was also the thing that made Laeha, admittedly, “not a big strong guy,” a top wrestler. They started JV wrestling at KSK in time for Laeha to be part of the first group, but he had an advantage of having learned some basic techniques from the older brother.
As a ninth-grader, Laeha placed second at the JV level in the first ILH season for the sport at that level. He moved up weight classes each year and as a senior, he won the ILH at 126 pounds and placed fourth in the state tournament.
What he learned was the sport itself, more specifically, the inner nature of the sport.
“The thing I love about this is the more work you put into it, the more you get out of it,” he said. “I’m a guy who had to wrestle with leverage, I couldn’t just throw you around.”
So, not to stretch the football analogy too far, wrestling gets down to technique, putting yourself in the most advantageous position to exert leverage on your opponent.
His teaching has inspired numerous Big Island wrestlers ever since Laeha moved here in 1987, several of whom have gone to next level competition in college.
Wife Noelani, a high school sweetheart, stayed with him through all his moves and all his coaching at various high schools, and that support was fully recognized recently when he got a call from his high school coach, Alfred Torres.
“It goes back a little,” Laeha said. “He called once and told me I had won state (as an assistant), then he called me another time and said I won a regional or sectional or something.
“I thought all that was nice,” he said, “then (Torres) called and said, ‘Guess what? You just won national wrestling assistant coach of the year,’ and my first response was, ‘Why?’
“All of these years,” Laeha said, “I never thought about that kind of stuff, I mean, never thought about it. All I wanted to do was work with these kids.
“I’m still in shock about it, I don’t know how to react, I just appreciate the recognition, it has truly humbled me.”
The road goes on for Laeha, always encouraging young people — boys and girls — to give the sport a try, to challenge themselves.
“Whenever I can get someone interested, get them out to practice and to the point where they begin to understand how to compete, it’s a great thing,” he said. “After their first match, win or lose, I run out to them and congratulate them ‘You just accomplished the biggest challenge you’ve had in your life, you prepared yourself and you took to the mat.’”
These days he still coaches and he is also requested by other coaches to bring some of his understanding of the mental approach to the sport. He has worked with volleyball, football and other teams.
He’s encouraging the new wrestling club starting up at Panaewa Park on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The central location is designed to bring in athletes from all local schools to improve their skills and expand their knowledge of the sport.
“At the end,” he said, “it’s not the one who gets his or her hand raised at the end who is the winner, it’s the one who takes what they’ve learned and use it to be more humble, to be a better person.”
It clearly worked for Keith Laeha.
Clarification on last week’s column about the new half marathon at Volcano, run by Keely and Adam McGhee, contracted by Big Island Race Events to organize the 100% Pure Kona race. Keely owns Hawaii Island Racers LLC with Nick and Kelly Muragin. Send your column ideas to bartrtibuneherald@gmail.com