 Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, and this is Beyond the Lines. We are broadcasting live from the beautiful Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and finding greatness. Today's special guest was our Punahou Athletic Director who hired me to be head coach for our Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team and is someone that I greatly respect and hold in high esteem. He has won 14 state championships as head coach for Punahou Boys Volleyball and Basketball, is one of our state's top sports psychologists, and is the longtime TV commentator for UH Men's and Women's Volleyball. He is Chris McLaughlin, and today we are going beyond sports. Chris, great having you here today on the show. Thanks Rusty, great being here. Well, it just seems like yesterday that you hired me as head coach. Yeah, I think it was yesterday. Now, I want to ask you about your early years. I mean, you lived in Hawaii when you're really young, then you went to the mainland, and then you moved back for your senior year at Punahou. Right. What is it about Punahou that you find so special? Well, first of all, when I moved back my senior year, what was really memorable about it was that it was really hard. I was going to a pretty good school at the time in Southern California at Newport, but Punahou was really hard. There was a thing called summer reading, which we had to read all these books, and I thought I could fake out the teachers by just playing basketball and volleyball all summer and surfing, and then I could come in Labor Day and grab Cliff's notes. These days, it sparks notes, but I would grab that and I'd pull the teachers and I'd pass the test, and not have to read the books. So, three days later, I got the culture shock that you better read your books around there and do your homework. That senior year was, I learned so much more there in one year than I did in three at Newport, so it was intimidating and fulfilling all at the same time. So why has Punahou such a special place? You know, I think, for me it was, there was a couple of teachers that really had an impact on me that have lasted to this day. And my art history teacher, Dick Nelson, was just an amazing teacher and Doc Barry, an amazing English teacher. I was like a great coach at Bud Scott for basketball, and you know, so those are some memorable times with basically mentors before they were called mentors. And I think that was, and I had great friends, so I had a circle of friends that really looked out for me, you know, kind of the only hallowed boy on the team and they watched out for me, and I'm really grateful to this day for how they looked out for a guy that was kind of new to the islands, but I was actually older than that, as I was here in kindergarten, first grade at Jefferson School when I was younger and so I was returning, but as far as they were concerned, they had gone to school together for 13 years. Breaking into those social circles was no easy task. And then you went to Stanford and you played volleyball there. How was your experience at Stanford? It was great. I mean, I actually appreciate it more now than I did then. Then I was more homesick my first year than anything else. I had a girlfriend back here, I missed my surfing, I missed Punahoe, a lot of wasted emotions. So now I give talks about homesick, but you don't do it, it's not worth it. But I was really homesick that first year. Then after that, I kind of, things got better. And I had an interesting experience with volleyball that I went to the first day of try out for a club volleyball and there's this guy who was on the Olympic team. He just played in Tokyo in the Olympics, got him John Taylor. He was like the best player in the university. He walks in and he says, he looks at the practice and he goes, he's got this clipboard. He says, you know, I'm 18 years old at the time. He looks, he says, you look like the most organized and enthusiastic guy here. I'm quitting. I've been with volleyball, I've had it. I think you should be the player coach now, not me. So as 18 years old, that's how my first coaching job was pretty intimidating to say the least, but we got through it somehow, kept the club alive for the next four or five years and then eventually became an NCAA sport. Chris, your family is incredible. I mean, your wife, Beth, and then your kids, Parker, Spencer, Becca, what are they all doing now? Well, Beth is doing a lot of health research. She's really into health. She's retired a couple of years from her 40-year career of teaching at La Pietra. And so now she's doing a lot of research on health, Parkinson's, dementia, Alzheimer's, whatever it is, you don't have anything to do with health and she's researching it, probably four to five hours a day. She can get a master's degree in health, I think. And she's still a volunteer coach at La Pietra. She's enjoying doing that. Parker just turned 40 in May and I'm still out in the PGA tour. A little bit tougher now getting consecutive starts. There's so many good young players out there but he's still playing out there when he can. In fact, he's Monday qualifying today in Las Vegas. Might be over right about now. And let's see, and Becca's is the next oldest. She's teaching her sixth year at Central Intermediate School in downtown Honolulu. She's in a kind of a challenging place to work but she really loves it. The sixth, seventh, and eighth graders there are really challenging and fun and she really enjoys it. She has a little one-year-old daughter named Mejana. She's not one year old, she's four, she's made four. And so she's a pistol and lots of fun. And her husband, Jason, does informational technology for a bunch of different places. And let's see, who's the third one? Spencer, Spencer went overseas to play in Greece after his Stanford career. And then he played on the beach for a while and then he got into coaching and he's been coaching club volleyball in Southern California. And then he got a job at Cal for Cal women's volleyball. So he coached there for two years. Now he's back at UCLA and he's assistant coach in the men's team. Enjoying it. He just loves coaching for some reason. He's only got a master's degree in teaching. He's veering away from that and he's doing all his teaching in the gym. Yeah. Chris, let's go back to 1979 when you were the head coach for the Punahou Boys basketball team. And you had a player on the team named Barry Obama. And you guys called him Barry, right? Yeah. And what kind of a player and person was he at that time? What I remember is that number one, he was really smart. I recall him carrying books in one hand, basketball in the other to school, lived across the street from the school. And I think nobody loved the game more than he did. And he had a couple other gym rats on that team that he was really close with. They would literally, they'd get to school at like 7.30, 7.00, they'd play for an hour. They'd go to class for three hours. It'd be lunchtime, they'd throw down lunch and they'd go play more basketball. Then at three o'clock they'd come see me and I'd be with them for three hours. And then he'd go home and grab a quick bite. Then he'd go over to McKinkey's playground, he'd play some street ball for a couple hours at night and then still got good grades. I don't know how he did it, not to tell you. Nobody loved basketball more than Barak, Barry then. Yeah. And I really admired his skill and his love for the game. Unfortunately, he was playing on a really, really good team. Oh, he didn't get as much playing time as he would have liked. But he was, he could have started on any of the other team in the league for sure. It was a pleasure to coach him and he was, and I loved his group of gym rats. Yeah. I was just like them when I was younger. Well, he was lucky to have a great coach in you. And you know, when he comes back to visit, right, you guys, a bunch of your former players and him get together and they play basketball. Yeah, they did. The first year after they got elected. Yeah. He came back and played right away. He wanted to get that group of seven and nine together and got a bunch of the seven and nine boys together. And an interesting thing that happened during that, it was a three-hour session. It was pretty special. And one of the players came up to me afterwards and said, hey, coach, Barak's better than Barry. I said, why do you say that? Well, Barak has taken pride in giving assists, as opposed to shooting more. And he takes charges and he gets great rebounds. He looks for players with better shots. And I said, well, some people learn those things later. And everybody's on a different line of care, but it's OK. But thanks for the comment. You must feel so proud watching your former players and him shoot around basketball. I mean, in the pun-ho gym nonetheless, huh? That must make you feel so happy. Yeah, it was really fun. Actually, I went to the upstairs. You went to a tiny place where it was more protected. There was the group that was there that day. And what was interesting was we were told to not bring any cameras. So that picture is really interesting because he actually said, hey, it's Christmas time. Let's do it like a Christmas picture here. Who's got a camera? And all of us were told to not bring cameras. So he also did one with the gang that played right there. And he did another one with our family. I thought, oh, wow, how special is that? So we've still got that on our wall somewhere. That's awesome. It was really nice him to do that. He was really thoughtful that way. And you visited him on a number of occasions in the Oval Office. Yeah, by the way, that was actually his choice. I had a stroke, a severe stroke, nine months prior to him getting elected. And he said to me, at that day, when we were playing basketball, he came over six times during that basketball game, during timeouts as a coach. How you doing? You feeling OK? And by then, I was recovered and I was doing fine. But he said, I'm concerned about you. He said, I want you to keep, let's stay in touch, OK? Whenever you get to DC, I want you to come and see me. I thought, oh, wow, really? Do you have a number? And he said he gave me a way to get a hold of him. What was interesting was that I started volunteering for the Heart Association. So I had a number of trips back there. What was interesting was he lived up to his word all six times I was there. Six times in the eight years, I was sent to a conference by the Heart Association, or the Stanford Men's Volleyball Women National Championships. So we were back there for the champions thing. And all six times, he was there. And the meetings weren't as long as the very first one, which was like a 20, 30 minute meeting in the Oval Office. The others were shorter. But all six times, he kept his word. And I really appreciated that, that he was a man of integrity. And he could have easily blown me off. I got to meet with Iran today, with the prime minister of England. But he always made time, even a few minutes. He made sure he made time. It was really pretty special. That's so great to hear those situations. And Chris, you know, as an athletic director at Punahou, I mean, you and Doug Bennett were such great athletic directors together. Why did you guys work so well together? Oh, gosh. Well, first of all, we had a great support staff. We had three great secretaries who did a lot of the work behind the scenes. And they were really special. They made us look good more often than not. It was also, he was more to the outdoor sports. And so he would do the fields, all the field sports. And I would do tennis and all the indoor sports, basketball and volleyball. We kind of meshed that way in that we were driven. And he was a baseball coach formerly, and a former football coach as well. So we sort of meshed that way. One guy liked a lot of these, and I got like those. And somewhere we made it work. The rest is history. When you hired me, you know, I was thinking, wow, you know, you're believing in me. And you know, I don't want to let you down. I don't want to agree, by the way. 24. 24. Who hires a 24-year-old in tennis club? That was gutsy of me, wasn't it? Bernardo actually held me to that. Bernardo Gussman, yeah, we're going to give him some credit. But you know, you guys, I mean, you're so supportive. And I mean, the vision that you guys had, because at that time, there was a lot of sports coaches that were teachers with a vague knowledge of sports. And then you guys, you and Doug ended up bringing in professionals and Olympians to be coaches, which really brought the athletic department to that higher level. We're lucky to have great support from our administrators. You know, again, our secretaries, our sports staff. Got him, Scotty Metcalf, was like our gym and field guy. He was like everywhere. Love, Scotty. He was very crucial to the success of the program. So thanks to the compliments. And I can show you just as many complaints by people that didn't like the job we did. So hopefully we made more people happy than not. And then after you and Doug retired, Tom Holden came in as athletic director. Fantastic guy. What do you admire about Tom Holden? I admire the fact that he listened to me and Doug when we passed the torch on. So he would actually, he would tease us. When Doug and I go back and visit, he'd say, oh, by the way, did you guys have a golf cart like we did? So he would ask, he had these extra perks, he asked for it, and he got them. And the golf cart was one of them. He'd say, oh, this is how I get around campus now. We had to walk every one of them. It was not fair. So he was tremendous. I'll tell you one thing he did that was really cool that Doug and I really admired was, Doug and I each started a couple of sports, to help start. I started to help start Women's Warpole. I think he was helped with the kayaking and maybe some canoe paddling. And then Tom was really proud that his mark on the program was sailing. Yeah, that's right. His son was a great sailor. But he and his wife, Kathy, were terrific, amazing partners in running that program and taking it even to higher heights than Doug and I tried to. Yeah. Well, Chris, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to continue going beyond sports. You're watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest, Chris McLaughlin. We will be back in 60 seconds. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at 1 o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Jampel, who I have known for over 30 years, about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about, human stories about law and life. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Wendy Lowe. And I want you to join me as we take our health back. On my show, all we do is talk about things in everyday life, in Hawaii or abroad. I have guests on board that would just talk about different aspects of health in every way, whether it's medical health, nutritional health, diabetic health. You name it, we'll talk about it. Even financial health, we'll even have some of the Miss Hawaii's on board. And all the different topics that I feel will make your health and your lifestyle a lot better. So come join me. I welcome you to take your health back. Mahalo. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My special guest today hired me to be head coach for our Punahoe Boys Varsity tennis team because he was our former Punahoe Athletic director. He is Chris McLaughlin. And today, we are going beyond sports. Chris, you've been the longtime TV commentator for UH Men's and Women's Volleyball. You've worked with Jim Leahy, the legend, and currently with Kanoa Leahy. Why do you love TV commentating so much? Well, first of all, Rick Blanchardi got me started way back in 1982. He called me just as I guess I won a couple of volleyball championships and I was a teacher. So maybe he'll be good on camera and be able to talk about, talk to an audience. So he called me and it's 35 years later now. Now I say to people, here's why I do it. I would go to the game anyway. Why not get paid for it? Yeah. But there's my buddy, Kanoa. And he and his dad admit so much to me. They both taught me so much about the art of broadcasting. I really appreciate and deeply indebted to both of them for teaching me so much. Well, I love watching it because your insights, I mean, you're just so great with your insights when the game is going on. I will tell you, I do a lot of homework, especially now that I'm retired. I have a lot more time to go to the gym and watch practices of the teams that are coming to town and watch the UH practices. So I feel like I'm pretty well prepared. Not as well prepared as you are. Your notes, they're way better than mine, but I work hard to be prepared. Chris, let's talk about coaching. What is it about coaching that you love so much? Probably because it's one of the few things I can do well. I'm not a great cook, nor am I a great handyman, but I found out over time that I kind of can coach. So I've taken it on my life's work. In terms of sports ecology, I've studied that really a lot. But coaching and helping others, I guess, has just been something I want to do. I would pass on knowledge to someone who doesn't have as much knowledge and wants to get it. That's the connection, I guess. I like doing that, too. What do you think the best coaches do? Well, the best coaches, I was taught a long time ago. My first mentor by accident was a guy named Tom Haney. I lived next door on campus. I put on my first nine years. He was a swimming coach of men and women. And he coached at the highest level, the national team level, the Pan-American Games. After I went to a few championships, he called me over next door and said, Chris, come here. Don't get high in the hog. I think you're something special, because I'm going to tell you something right now. You're not going to out-coach people just because you know more about the sport. Here's what's important about coaching. You've got to be organized. You've got to be enthusiastic. Remember that kid. And you are organized, and you're enthusiastic. You get both qualities going for you. So far, so good. Absolutely, absolutely. Chris, my book, Beyond the Lines, I talk a lot about creating a culture of excellence. And that's what you're all about. I mean, you have that superior culture of excellence. And I talk a lot about mindset and perspective. Give me your thoughts about that. Well, in this day and age, what I'm doing in my retirement is I'm doing a lot of, you can call it team building, but not I call it more culture building. I'm going to steal your word there. Culture being defined as this is the way we do things around here. So when I work with teams, I work with them to build a culture that I think is going to lead to success. They all can be the best they can be. They might not win, but they're all going to be the best they can possibly be. And that culture is very often defined by respect for each other. It's defined by resilience. I'll keep it that simple, because we don't have like, I usually do a 16 hour thing of this thing. So I won't take 16 hours. But respect and resilience are two words that are a really important part of any team culture. I love that. Chris, everyone's gone through certain adversities in their lives, but what's been your biggest adversity that you faced in your life? I'd be nervous about doing this today, I guess. No, probably the biggest adversity probably would be the severe stroke I had in January of 2008. I was six months into my retirement. I was really looking forward to seeing my daughter teaching in Utah, our Palm Springs, and seeing my Parker playing on the PJ Tour. And Spencer was playing in a Stanford at the time volleyball. And so I'm five days into this wonderful month-long retirement gift to myself, I guess you could call it. And I went down. I was severe. I was fairly paralyzed. I was fully paralyzed on my right side, couldn't speak. And luckily, I was with a couple people, one of whom had just had a stroke, 10 feet from where I had mine, three years prior. They knew exactly what I was going through. And they called 911. Things just lined up. And I was very lucky to get to a stroke-certified hospital within an hour and 15 minutes. So a minister TPA to me within an hour and 15 minutes. So that was probably the biggest challenge, was thinking, well, it might be all over. God might have called me in early. So I was lucky, and things worked out, I'm here with you now. My blessings every day I wake up and see the sunshine. Yeah, no, totally. And it's great that you made a full recovery. And I mean, you look fantastic, Chris. Well, I have some deficits. I search for words sometimes. It's really frustrating. But some people say that's also old age. I'm lucky to be here thanks to the lady who invented TPA, or the clone to TPA, a lady by the name of Dr. Diane Panika, an amazing lady. She and my stroke doctor, Dr. Neil Schwartz. The two people kind of kept me going. I wouldn't be here without Diane Panika. And her two years of research she did to clone TPA, that's a whole other hour story, I can tell you. She's amazing. And Dr. Schwartz has been my best buddy throughout these last 11 years in Jeremy. No. Chris, so knowing that, what do you feel is your purpose in life? Right now I feel like it's my responsibility. When you get this grade, this much gray hair, this much mana'au running through you, the Hawaiian word for wisdom. If I have any wisdom, I feel obligated and responsible to pass it on. And it's easier to pass it on these days to directly to coaches as opposed to doing a lot of players. You do players, there's so many to get to. There's a larger audience. I still do teams, do culture building with teams and pass it on. But it's really, I can get to one coach who's coaching two or three teams. Now you're getting at 60 kids with one coach. So I tend to want to work with coaches like that and to share as much hopefully wisdom as I can and pass on what I've learned in the world of sports ecology and team building. Speaking of wisdom, what's the best advice you ever received? It'll probably be that the guy was telling you about. I think I spoke too soon in that story. And to be a great coach, you got to be organized. You got to be enthusiastic. That was probably the best advice I ever got. I love that because I would tell my players, I said, you know, we might not be able to play like Federer and Nadal, but we can, you know, have the same type of effort, attitude, and enthusiasm that they do. Exactly. And it makes sense. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think it's one of the reasons why you've been successful is clearly you would say you were organized. You know, you've written one book already. I hear another one's in the works. So clearly you were organized. It's hard to write books. And you were clearly enthusiastic about what you do. So you have those two characteristics in you. It's no accident that you've had as much success as you have, even half you won 22 eight times. Well, you won 14. I'll never catch you because I'm not going there. Chris, I want to ask you, when you were coaching, how did you get your players to rise to the occasion? Yeah, that's a good question. First of all, back in 1975, I had won a few championships. I was kind of, I knew I could train my players physically. You just came real hard, go longer, do extra workouts. The physical part really wasn't a problem. And technically, I knew I could teach them the skills the proper way. What I hadn't explored was what goes on between the years. So at that time, in 1975, there was only one sports psychologist in this country. There was a bunch in the Iron Curtain countries, in Russia and the Iron Curtain countries. Only one really in the United States. I got him Dr. Tom Tutko. Great guy. I got to know him pretty well. And so I read his book and I kind of took it to heart. And then I started applying it to all my teams. All the stuff was in his book. And ever since then, this is now 44 years later, I'm still applying the stuff that he taught. And I'm still researching and doing all these books and trying to meet these great sports psychologists. I steal from them all the time. Dr. Don Green is one of the guys I've stolen from. He is a parker sports psychologist. And if I'm with a client and things are at work, and I go, hold on just a second, let me call Doc. So I'll call my guru and he'll inevitably have a great answer for me. So I've sort of just made it my hobby. I haven't taken a, I actually started a course at the only high school sports psychology course in the country, I think, at the time. But I've never taken like a formal sports psychology course. I've learned kind of on the go, sort of, I've learned by just reading every single book I could find that would help me be a better sports psychologist I've pretty much read. Oh, that's been my passion over the last 44 years. And that's why you're one of the greatest, Chris. Well, I steal from them. I put two guys together, or a guy and a girl together, a little Carol Dweck, Mind Sweat mindset. I take her stuff and I put it together with somebody else. And as far as original stuff goes, I'm not sure that I can really lay claim to some great sports ecology theory or concept that I can put my hands on, but I'll put things together and do the best thing for a particular athlete or a particular team. Chris, I gotta tell you, it was such a pleasure having you on the show today. I wanna thank you for your insights. I mean, you definitely go beyond the lines. Like I said earlier, I greatly respect you. I hold you in such high esteem. Thank you, Ressie. Great being here and thanks for having this show. Thank you, Chris. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Chris and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.