The passion to perform

Some things cannot be taught or coached.

Drive. Ambition. Discipline. Passion.

Especially passion.

Especially in sprint kayaking.

In a 200-meter race, it’s 40 seconds of push, push, push. There is no room in the boat for anything other than oneself and mental strength.

Finish times are measured not in seconds, but in one-hundredths, often one-thousandths. Literally a blink of the eye is the difference between first and fourth.

To be the best in this sport requires a commitment that many try to attain but few actually achieve.

It is who Kaimi Yoza is and is trying to become.

The Mid-Pacific senior has been crazy-training, sometimes three times a day, on the Ala Wai Canal. She already is a member of the U.S. Junior National Canoe/Kayak Flatwater Sprint Team — one of three females on the 2014 squad — but, this year, that is not enough.

The end goal is to make the U.S. Junior World Team that will compete in the ICF World Championships in July in Szeged, Hungary. The trials are April 25-26 in Oklahoma City, with women’s races at 200- and 500-meters.

Yoza’s commitment to make the world team has come with an early alarm and a pre-dawn drive from Kailua for the first of her workouts on the water.

"It’s tough but you have to really keep pushing," said Yoza, who wakes at 4:15 a.m. and leaves home around 5 in order to get to the Ala Wai by 5:30. "You have to really dream. You have to really want it.

"What you put in is what you get out. And that means a lot of discipline."

It’s tough for the 17-year-old. She’s faster than the other Hawaii Canoe/Kayak Team members in her age group but just a little slower than the HCKT boys.

It means she often trains by herself or with HCKT coach Zsolt Szadovski, a former Hungarian National Kayak Team member and world champion in the K-4 (four-person kayak). It also means that there is an extra bit of pressure on both Yoza and Szadovski; if his nationally-ranked junior makes the team, he will travel back to his native Hungary with her and be about two hours from his hometown of Budapest.

Ask the two who wants it more and "it would be very nice to be able to go back and have her competing, maybe with some of our boys," said Szadovski, the HCKT head coach for the past 15 months. "It is a huge sport where I come from. There will be a huge festival as part of the worlds. There will be 10,000 people watching."

"I know (Szadovski) really wants to go," Yoza said. "Sometimes I think he wants it more than I do but that is part of our great relationship.

"It’s a little love-hate but he’s great, knows what it takes to be at that international level. He understands when I get frustrated."

"I give Zsolt a lot of credit," Kehau Yoza said of her daughter’s coach. "She is a little spitfire but he gets it.

"Am I surprised that she has done this well? No. I’m proud of her and it’s no surprise knowing how this is how determined she has always been."

Kehau Yoza recalls that when Kaimi was 4, she wanted to take the training wheels off her bike. Kehau said no and left for work.

"When I come back, she’s riding the bike, without the training wheels," she said. "She had convinced my aunt to take them off.

"When she gets it in her mind, she makes it happen. She’s always been very determined, very driven."

"I’m a little surprised," father Bobby Yoza said. "Because of her size, not her work ethic. She has always overachieved.

"She grew up on the water and has had great coaches."

Kaimi Yoza has raised eyebrows with her success given that she often is the smallest competitor in her event … by 4 or 5 inches. She is 5 feet 3, around 115 pounds but "it’s really all about knowing how to move your body weight," she said. "There are definitely some big girls that I go against."

"The nice thing about paddling is you just have to have the strength for your own weight," Szadovski said. "It’s about having the mentality to be really tough. You can use that size to your advantage. The shorter, the more compact. Being compact is handy in the sprints.

"Is she Olympic caliber? It’s hard to tell; that is a personal choice. But she is someone who can make it to the Olympics if she wants it."

He admits to the love-hate relationship as well.

"She is very strong-minded," he said. "We have our arguments, which I like. But I think if you want to do well individually, you kind of have to be that way. If it’s what she wants, we’d be looking at 2020 (Summer Olympics in Tokyo). Rio (2016 Olympics) would be nice but it would be too soon."

It’s difficult to say where Yoza will be in six years. She is still deciding where to attend college, having been accepted wherever she applied.

The choices appear to have been narrowed to UCLA, Pepperdine and Point Loma Nazarene. That latter is a small school in San Diego, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The lure of San Diego is that it is close to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, as well as to outrigger canoe clubs on Mission Bay, and surf spots from Ocean Beach to Trestles off San Onefre. Likely a pre-med student who might end up in sports medicine, she hopes to be able to paddle and surf during her down time between school work and kayaking.

Another goal is to compete in the Na Wahine O Ke Kai, women’s Molokai-to-Oahu outrigger race, but "I’d have to choose between training for that or for the trials," said Yoza, a steersman who first competed for Lanikai Canoe Club and now Outrigger Canoe Club. "My feeling is Molokai will always be there but this opportunity won’t be."