Jimmy Yagi honored for being pioneer of small college basketball in Hawaii

This is the 44th year of the “Living Treasures of Hawaii Recognition Program” and basketball coach Jimmy Yagi might be the first of its honorees to describe his path there as beginning when he was “roped into” a role in history.

The accomplishments in a job that he neither sought nor thought he would spend any appreciable time in will be celebrated by the Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii Saturday at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort.

It isn’t just his humility that prompts the 83-year-old Yagi to downplay his successes, it is also understanding the randomness of how it all unfolded for the man who became the father of small college basketball in Hawaii.

Yagi was working full-time in the family’s Kulana Foods Ltd. plant in Hilo and helping out as a part-time assistant coach at what was then known as Hilo (Community) College in 1973 when head coach Ramon Goya decided to take a sabbatical to pursue a doctorate at the University of Utah.

Yagi did not seek the job of replacing Goya but agreed to serve on a selection committee to help facilitate the choice of a successor.

When the job produced no takers, Yagi was asked to hold down the position on a strictly “temporary basis” playing a schedule of junior college, military and club teams. He agreed, but only, he said, until the school could find a “real” coach.

One season of rising for a 4 a.m. shift at the meat-packing plant, followed by teaching two afternoon classes and coaching basketball on into the night soon begat another.

Before Yagi knew it, the Vulcans were selling sweetbread and washing cars to help underwrite the expenses of playing an all-college schedule at the NAIA level.

Their string of 20-win seasons — including seasons of 26, 27 and 29 wins between 1977 and ’79 — was racking up upsets and filling the benches at the Hilo Civic. And, nobody in the suddenly hoops-mad town wanted to hear him talk about retirement.

In what passed for the offseason, he operated what would become a long-running, globe-trotting series of instructional camps that took him to Europe and Asia. Thanks to civic and Vulcan officials, it continues to this day.

By the time he finally hung up his whistle in 1985, Yagi had gone 252-126 (208-86 vs. an all-college schedule) and taken the Vulcans to the NAIA National Basketball Tournament in Kansas City three times. He suffered just one losing season in 12 years.

That prompted Chaminade, Brigham Young-Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific and, for a time, Hawaii Loa, to get serious about basketball as well as add other sports to quickly burgeoning athletic programs for both men and women.

When the Silverswords stunned No. 1-ranked Virginia in 1982, Chaminade coach Merv Lopes credited Yagi and the Vulcans for setting a standard that compelled everybody else to reach higher.

Yagi’s success was built upon hard work, discipline, community service and an old-school attention to fundamentals, much as he had learned from his coaches, including Ah Chew Goo at UH-Manoa.

They are traits and qualities that he not only continues to preach but live, funding a scholarship at UH-Hilo with his wife, Jeanne.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.