For high school coaches, time management can be a challenge during the holidays — especially when the athletes are on break.
“It’s not easy,” said Greg Lum Ho, the girls’ basketball coach at Keaau, “mostly because our district is so big, we have kids from Volcano to Paradise Park, a lot of them need to take the bus to school because their parents have jobs that conflict with giving rides (to school).
“We have a conflict with Easter in cross country, but kids have things to work on and they can do that on their own for a few days,” he said. “You can’t do much in basketball without a place to play, so what I do is I will hold practice every day (over the holidays), but you might get 50 percent turnout and with JV and varsity, they are working on different things, so it’s a challenge. The varsity is usually 10 steps ahead of the JV and we have girls (on JV), who have literally never played basketball before.”
Lum Ho said after everyone gets back together, “that first game can be a little spotty.”
Practices and games can be spotty when school is out, but Hilo boys’ coach Ben Pana had some games scheduled that helped make up for a couple weeks of no games.
“We were off 17 days after Thanksgiving, so we were fortunate to have some games scheduled recently,” he said. “Outside of Christmas Day and New Years Day, we have practices or games scheduled. Everyone shows up, and that’s good, but when you have a couple games scheduled, it keeps them involved.
“We say if you make at least two practices in a week, you are eligible to play, so that’s been well received. We had a game against Ka‘u and I’m just happy that all 13 of our guys got to play, and they played some quality minutes.”
“All the families have different schedules over the holidays, so we just open practice and try to stay active with as many kids as can make it.”
Because so many families have schedules that take them away or have them hosting events, Pahoa girls’ coach Glenn Kokubun basically has an open gym policy.
“It can be challenging,” Kokubun said, “so I usually try to have turnouts earlier, like 10 a.m. so it’s not in the middle of the day when other things may be going on.”
“For us, whoever shows up, shows up, but we generally have around 90 percent turnout, it’s kind of a bonding experience for these girls. This year, we’ve had the biggest turnout we’ve had in at least 10 years; we had 28 turn out, whereas in the last five years or so we’ve only had 6-to-8, and with those numbers, you can’t even scrimmage.”
At Pahoa, Kokubun can thank his girls for recruiting new basketball players.
“Our girls took it upon themselves to go out there and recruit,” he said. “They went to the volleyball team and got a bunch of them to come out, so now we have 15 on JV and 13 on the varsity, so we had a pretty good team in terms of numbers, but then when grades come out, sometimes you get hit.”
“One of our best players has grade issues,” Kokubun said, “and we know it’s sports that is keeping her in school, so we’ve been to the AD and the principal, trying to make the case, but we’ll see what happens.”
Pahoa reached the playoffs last year, and while it fell to Honokaa in the third place game, the experience, “lit the fuse,” for this season, according to Kokubun.
“We had big expectations this year because of that,” he said, “so we just have to keep working at it.”
