You could tell from the look on his face his encounter with ex-Indiana chief Bobby Knight might have been his most fondest memory. “Hey Jimmy Yang,” Knight had said to him at a coaches seminar somewhere in Indiana. “How’s it
You could tell from the look on his face his encounter with ex-Indiana chief Bobby Knight might have been his most fondest memory.
“Hey Jimmy Yang,” Knight had said to him at a coaches seminar somewhere in Indiana.
“How’s it going over there in Hilo?”
Yagi, who was the Hilo Vulcans head coach for 18 seasons and had attended a few of Knight’s tutorials, still beams when he says it.
“He remembered my name!,” he exclaims, the memories growing stronger with age. “That’s a brilliant man, that Knight. He remembers my name among all those people.”
Around 300 to 400 coaches from around the nation attended these seminars. Some were former college basketball stars, others just trying to work their way through the system.
But among them rose a giddy, 5’6″ coach from somewhere 3,000 miles away from mainland coastlines. A humble man, Yang still can’t believe Knight knew who he was. He’d rather pass off an obvious compliment and say the Indiana coach was brilliant and had a photographic memory.
Well, he’s half right.
Although Knight is a pillar among men in the college basketball community, he doesn’t remember everyone he sees. But something about Yagi was familiar to the legendary coach. Maybe it’s that Knight was impressed with Yagi’s season average 20 wins, and his ability to make small-school students play big time basketball.
Maybe it was just because “Yagi” is a cool name.
But maybe, in an almost existential sense, Bobby Knight, like all non-fiction legends, can sense the presence of greatness. Not so much in the celebrity sense, but in how Yagi has mastered the trade.
Coach Yagi is a legend. A Hawaii legend. And even if Knight did have a photographic memory, he could never deny that Yagi is the most influential figure in Hawaii basketball.
Today, still vibrant at 67, Yagi continues to stomp the hardwood, and still preaches the same sermon that has developed young basketball players all these years.
He was in Kauai early Saturday morning, teaching the early teens a valuable lesson in footwork. He re-iterated the importance of fundamentals to the high school kids later that afternoon, and even held a coaches seminar of his own that night.
Yagi does this for many of Hawaii’s kids. He makes sure to hold a free basketball camp for almost every Hawaiian island, and even coaches kids in countries around the world.
Yagi held camps in Japan alongside NBA stars’ Kobe Bryant and John Starks, coached in Italy, France, Germany and England, and even accepted an offer to bring his camp to Yugoslavia at a confusing time when Belgrade was becoming a Serbian city.
He’s been there, and he’s done that. But Hawaii still remains the threshold of his lasting legacy.
“Watching these kids grow up and seeing how young coaches develop, that’s why I come back to places like [Kaua’i] and continue to coach,” said Yagi. “I come back and watch the high school games, see the kids who I helped teach through the years, and continue to observe how they play today.”
