 I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou School Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about inspiration, leadership, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is one of the star players on our University of Hawaii women's volleyball team. She is Kate Lang, and today we are going Beyond Volleyball. Hey, Kate, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Kate, you guys have been doing so great. I mean, the fans, the community, they love watching you and your teammates. But can I first start by asking you where you grew up at, and when did you start playing volleyball? Yeah, I actually grew up in North Texas. I played volleyball starting at the age of seven. So I was super young, but I was mixing in with basketball and soccer and all the sports, dipping my toes in every pond. And I decided to pursue volleyball when it came to middle school because I loved it and wanted to keep doing what I loved. So I started playing club, and that's when I started playing at clubs that are based in Dallas, Texas. Wow, that's great. And Kate, how did it come about that you ended up choosing the University of Hawaii? I would say that I began my recruitment process at 15 years old. But Coach Rob, she reached out to me when I was just right at the beginning of the recruitment process. And I was super excited because I had actually reached out to Dave Soji before, and I didn't realize that he was actually in the middle of his retirement. So I didn't hear back, but it wasn't because he wasn't interested. It was because he literally wasn't on staff anymore. So I was being a little 15-year-old and confused. And when I got to meet Coach Rob in person, it was just a really cool experience. And I was super psyched. There was a lot of rules about recruitment and things like that whenever we were at tournaments. And she couldn't talk to me personally, but there was a lot of ways that I could tell that she was interested just by sitting at my core. And she's a setter. I'm a setter. So we have minds that think alike in that way. But it was really cool getting on the phone with her. And I was just so honored to have phone calls with someone that has been awarded so many accolades throughout the years and earned so many things. So it was just really cool getting to know her during my recruitment process. And I just ended up loving it and went for it. Well, she is our Olympian. Yeah. And Kate, what are some things now that you know Coach Robin? What are some things that you admire about her? I admire so many things about Coach Rob. But one thing that I do admire is her legacy that she's left throughout the program and throughout Hawaii as a whole, just being constantly being herself and just being a strong female athlete, I think is such an important factor when it comes to being a coach and knowing that you're a female coach and wanting to not knock people down for being female, but strengthening people through that and telling us that we can do the same thing that men do and we can do all of that. So she talks about it all the time about how men's volleyball players play a different game than we do, but that doesn't make us weaker. It just makes us a different type of volleyball. So I just really, I love that about her. And I think that it's a great mindset that she's in and it's just saying like, you know what? We're tough too. Like we're tough in our own way. Yeah, I completely agree. And Kate, when you're in practices or in matches, what are some things that coach Robin does that makes her an effective coach? I think that her standard overall is something that makes her such an effective coach. She really, she does not care who our opponent is. She doesn't care what's going on on the other side of the net. She always has this standard for us as a team to play to and the goal is always to exceed that. Last week before our game, she actually was talking in the locker room. And I actually believe it was coach Kaleo, our associate head coach. And he said that, you know, when you work in the real world you want to exceed the expectations of whatever boss is giving you instruction. And you know, coach Rob expects that as well. And we're just all on top of that. We're all eager to exceed her expectation and that standard that she gives us. So just her motivation and inspiration that she gives us just makes her such an effective coach. Now, Kate, I want to ask you this because when I was coaching, I would always make my practices harder so that when we would play matches, it would be easier. And I would also try to simulate pressure situations in practice that we would experience in the matches. What are your thoughts about that? Yeah, I think that that's so important. And we do that as well. When we're playing teams like UC Santa Barbara who have really fast tempos and people who are doing things that are those pressure situations that you were referring to, coach Rob actually goes into the practice gym and she sets the B side. So we play against coach Rob, which is, it seems impossible sometimes but A side has, we've had our backbone. So I'm excited. And I think that she definitely understands that that's a big part of it too is making practice harder than the actual game. So when we have hard practices. Yeah, I'm sure you guys do. And I know that coach Robin, she still has it as well. And Kate, I want to ask you about setting. I mean, you are our team setter. What do you write in a game just before you're going to do that set? What are you focused on? There's so many things that come with setting other than just having a clean touch on the ball. And in the game, there's so many other factors that honestly have nothing to do with the product with me just setting a ball. I'm always constantly thinking about which hitters hot. I'm thinking about where my blockers are, which blockers are up. Like I study the blockers throughout the week and I look at which one are their weakest blockers. If this middle doesn't like to move to her left or if she doesn't like to move to her right. I try to pick at stuff like that and always just having an offensive strategy with that. So I'm constantly thinking about that during the game and it's really helpful during timeouts when I can talk to my coaches and they can remind me of the game plan and always trying to get our middles involved as much as possible. And being aggressive with my tempo and any type of strategy that I'm having during that game too and staying confident in my team. So that's just a few things that go through my mind. That's a lot of things. And Kate, you, Yacob Tella on the men's team graduated last year. I mean, he was our legendary setter. What was your guys relationship like? I knew Yacob pretty well. And I didn't know him like super well, but I mean, the volleyball teams at UH were all friends. We all mesh all the time. We definitely have a lot in common. So the most that I ever talked to him about setting, he was just constantly talking about kind of just what I just said. I'm knowing who's hot and wanting to feed your hitters who are gonna get the job done fastest, get in and out of the game as fast as you can. And middles are a huge part of the men's game as well. At the time, I believe that Pat Gassman was still at UH when I was talking to him about this. So that was an era of its own. So yeah, I mean, it's, as long as you have the pieces to the puzzle, all the setters have the same mindset when it comes to offensive strategy. So it was really cool getting to know Yacob in that way. Oh, totally. And Kate, I wanna ask you about serving. So just before you serve, what is your serving routine? Yeah, we actually talk about how serving is the only thing that you truly are in 100% control of. And everyone, it's really important to have your own routine when you go back there. So I try to give myself some confidence and I try to walk back there. I'm usually dribbling the ball, dribbling the ball like a basketball player, thinking like, okay, and I'm like looking at the floor. I always look at the Hawaii sign whenever we're at home, which is always nice to have something specifically to look at. And I'm just thinking like, I'm gonna ace this next person. Like this girl's not, she's not gonna get passed on this. Like I'm gonna ace this ball and we're gonna go home basically. Like I, let's do it. So I turn around, I dribble the ball a few more times with two hands. And then I look over to coach Nick and he gives me my serving call and I take a deep breath. And I just look at the ball. I actually on the molten sign, you can see in the picture on the molten, the O, there's actually a little fire sign. So I look at the fire sign right before, like whenever I'm holding the ball with two hands, I always look at the fire sign. And then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna ace this girl. And then I just go for it. I love hearing the details like that. Yeah, it's funny. You're right, because even in tennis, the serve in tennis is something that you have 100% total control of, just like you said about volleyball serving. But I like hearing your insights like that because I know all of the fans when they're at the Stan Sheriff's Center, I mean, they're thinking, what is she thinking of? You know what I mean? I just like some of these details, these insights would be really good. And I wanna ask you, Kate, about blocking. So when you go up there for a big block, like does it hurt? Yes, it absolutely hurts. I actually, I have a funny story for that. So my first year, whenever we were in COVID, we were doing blocking drills during practice on like one of the days that we were actually able to practice. And Coach Anne was still here. And she was like this legendary middle blocker. So she was always on the blocking court and I remember it was my first drill ever in my entire life doing a blocking drill during practice because in club, I ran a six two and I never touched the front row. So I had never blocked. I had never even like tried to block, honestly. Like I didn't want any part of it because I didn't wanna break my nails. Texas girl came out, she did not wanna break her nails. So I went into the drill and I'm like, I'm trying to block, I'm learning how to block. I don't know if Coach Anne was super aware that I had never done a blocking drill before but my hands were bright red. Like they were bright red and they were throbbing. And I'm looking at them and I'm like, oh my gosh, what is going on? What is this? And Coach Anne is like slamming the ball into my wrist and I'm like, ow. And she goes, what did you just say? And I was like, I didn't say anything, I didn't say anything at all. And I'm like, oh my God, that hurts so bad. But I'm going over there and I just had to get through it. And that was, I could not wait for that blocking drill to be over with. I was in so much pain. So I love hearing that because I mean, for me, when I'm growing up, I'm playing baseball and soccer and sometimes we practice volleyball on our own and man, it hurts. I mean, when somebody's slamming it and you're digging it or blocking, I mean, that hurts. Yeah, it hurts. I'm glad that you shared that story and Kate, I wanna ask you when you're in the match and when the point's done and you girls get into the huddle and you're with each other like that, what are you talking about? Most of the time we're just talking about like, well, sorry, could you repeat if it was for after the game or between points? Yeah, like between points. Okay. Most of the time, if we won the point, then we're celebrating, but we're also doing minor fixes like there's always something that you could fix. Sometimes I'm apologizing for my set and I'm saying, hitter, thank you so much for saving my butt. That was a great swing. Or we're loving on our passers. We love loving on our passers and our diggers because they really, they do the most selfless acts. They're just always getting hit, just getting hit and getting the ball up for us. So we love loving on our teammates that don't get the most spotlight all the time. That's a really big part of this team, which I think is really important for the culture of the program. So that's a lot of the stuff that we're saying. Yeah, and Kate, how would you describe your team's identity? I think on the court, we are strategic and energetic and we go all out like full set and every single time. And you can tell that in the games that we have not performed as well is when we're playing tentative. So we know that our identity is that we have to go 100% or we're not gonna perform the way that we know we can perform. Just always being as aggressive as possible. But I think off the court, my team is full of comedians. We're full of just some of us who are not on the court but I'm definitely included in this. I have total blonde moments all the time. Like I'm such a jock sometimes. I can't think outside of volleyball courts. Like I'm, my mind is blown. We have, but then we also have like super smart people like Riley, who's a chem major. So we're just, we're full of all this stuff but we are so funny. This team is hilarious. I never leave a day thinking there's nothing that funny that happened today. Like there's always an event. No matter where we are, there's always an event. It seems like you girls are super close. I mean, you're so tight. You're all like best friends. Is that true? Yeah, it is. And I'm so appreciative of that on this team because it's not like that every year. So having honestly the past two years, this year and last year, we've been so close. I hang out with all of them outside of volleyball. Like I can't, I see literally every single one of them outside of volleyball, which is, you know, it's not, I wouldn't say it's like something that has to go on for volleyball teams, like for any teams, you don't have to be best friends with your teammates, but it sure does help when you have some type of chemistry and relationship off the court, I think. I completely agree. And Kate, I, you know, this is something that Coach Robin and her coaching staff, they've implemented, you know, they've built this culture of excellence. And that's why you girls feel like how you do. And Kate, I want to ask you about my books. Ryan Tanaka was so generous to do a big book donation of both of my books to your entire team, the players and the coaches. What are some things that stood out to you in the books? I think that just having, I mean, I talked about it earlier actually, just having that standard of excellence and like always going for that and not being okay with like anything else, but you're 100% all the time. One thing that I learned from your book that I think it was in Beyond the Lines, it was talking about how you're in control of your own thoughts and how you're in control of all of your own actions and anything that you say into the world is completely on you. So I think that ever since coming to college and learning about that, I've become a completely different teammate, volleyball player, person, everything. And yeah, that was like, that was my number one takeaway from Beyond the Lines was just being in control of your own thoughts. I'm glad you brought that up because it's all about mindset. And you know that the brain controls the body and you know, if you have the right mindset that allows you to have self-discipline which leads to habits, which lead to success which gives you a chance for greatness. Do you agree? I totally agree, I totally agree. I think that if you don't have that quality about yourself then you're not gonna be as successful as you could have been. And who's not gonna set themselves up to be as successful as possible, you know? Yeah, totally. And I totally get that. And you know, that's why, you know, I'm trying to, I wanna build high achievers and once they become a high achiever I wanna help them become superior achievers. And Kate, I wanna ask you about Bratahood Grimes, Sisterhood Grimes at Giovanni Pastrami restaurant. Ryan Tanaka is the founder of Bratahood and Sisterhood Grimes and there you are with your whole team. And how was that event at Giovanni Pastrami? It's so fun. I love going to Giovanni Pastrami's. Anytime that we get the chance, Ryan, we're always like, yes, please let us come. Like we, let us bother your restaurant. It's so fun. We, I love being able to meet people that are truly, like they're truly there to help us and they want to learn about us and they want to be a part of the community just as much as we wanna be a part of the community. So it's really nice hearing about professional development and being able to learn things that, you know, athletes sometimes aren't given as much credit as they should be given in my opinion in the real world because yeah, we can't have as many, like we kind of have like a job that we work during season. Like I can't work my job during my entire season. So that's six months out of the year where I'm unemployed. But Ryan had a great way of putting it. He said, no, you're not unemployed. You're a student athlete who's putting in probably 40 hours a week alone thinking about volleyball, doing volleyball, like anything that you can think of that goes towards your job during that time. And that just gave me so much more confidence myself because, you know, athletes are told like, oh, well, you probably had bad grades in college or in high school because you were so focused on your sport. And that's not true. We work really hard, but sometimes there's a balance you have to give to get, you know? So some people can totally have a 4.0, don't get me wrong and like be it stellar athletes. That's, there's some people that are born like that. But then there's other people who, you know, they have to put some eggs in this basket and some eggs in that basket. So I think that it's a great experience being able to develop as like a professional and not an athlete, but still be given credit as an athlete in that environment at Giovanni Pistromis. Yeah, I know, I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, Ryan is brilliant. And for him to provide, you know, clarity like that for you, I mean, that's so valuable. And do you remember that's at Giovanni's, that's where I met you for the first time? Do you remember that? That's where I got the courage. That's where I got the courage to come up to you. Why were you nervous? I was nervous because I've read all of your books and I'm, I work with Chris McLaughlin, shout out, Chris McLaughlin and I just think about like everything that you've written for so long and it's something that's really helped shape me as an athlete. And so going up to you, I was like, hi, I'm Kate. It's so nice to meet you. I've read every single word of all of your books and I'm obsessed with them. And yeah, so I was just obviously so nervous. Thank you, Kate. It was so great meeting you and, you know, for you to come up and share what you did and Chris McLaughlin, love Chris McLaughlin. I mean, he was our athletic director at Puno School who hired me actually for the boys varsity team and he's such a great man. And Kate, I wanna ask you in regards to the Sisterhood Grimes program that Ryan created, you know, I was a speaker at one of the classroom events and, you know, he brought in other community leaders to try to talk to the women's volleyball team about life after volleyball. How valuable are those talks when I did the speaking or when some of my other colleagues did the speaking to really share insights with your team? Oh, they're so valuable. They just help us so much with understanding that some of the qualities that we're gonna be able to pull from our athletic careers, they will be able to be applied in our professional careers. And, you know, they also point out though, you have to work at these other characteristics as well and start buckling down in your last couple of years in college so that you can be a professional and be good at your job. And they also help with internships because a lot of us, we work as much as we can, but, you know, having volleyball and constantly going from volleyball in the morning to school in the afternoon to more school in the evening because of how much we have to study, we usually don't really get the chance to apply for jobs or apply for internships because they want us to work for 30 hours a week and we just don't have that time on our hands. So being able to meet people that they understand and they want to help. And a lot of the people that Ryan knows, he knows so many people that are very high up and really cool companies. So being able to meet them and be like, oh my gosh, this is accessible to me now. And they understand that I can't give them 40 hours a week, 30 hours a week, because I have this, this and this throughout the rest of my day. So it's just, it's a great, it's really wonderful. I'm very appreciative towards Ryan. Yeah, it's such a great program, this brotherhood grind, sisterhood grinds because it's beyond providing food. It's really showing the student athletes that we care, Ryan cares about what happens to you after graduating University of Hawaii and to really set you up in the professions that you might want. And Kate, what's the major that you're studying right now? I'm currently double majoring through the honors program at UH. So I'm, my primary is political science and I picked up a second major that is basically like a cousin to political science so that I still see the same professors from the political science department, but they're just teaching different classes that are in the women's gender and sex studies major. And then I also have to take classes through my honors program that helps with just, it's usually writing intensive and I write about all kinds of stuff. So yeah. Oh, that's great to hear. And Kate, I want to ask you personally, what's a big adversity that you dealt with in your life? When I was 16, my father actually passed away right before club season was supposed to start. So he passed away in the first week of December. And I mean, I was in my junior year of high school. So that was really tough and I had already committed to UH. So that made it a little bit more interesting as well. So that was something that I really struggled with. Yeah, yeah. No, and Kate, so I want to ask you, when you're in Hawaii, what are some things that you like to do in Hawaii for fun? I love eating. I love eating. I constantly am trying to find new restaurants. I'm a food critic. If anyone wants to look at my Instagram, it's being flooded with food pictures currently at Kate.lang on Instagram. It's flooded with food Instagrams, but I am constantly going from Chinatown to Waikiki to Kaimuki to Eastside and even like North Shore food. I just, I love trying every food that I can get my hands on. So that's my favorite thing to do here. Now, what about going to the beach and hiking? Oh yeah, I'll do that too. I'll do that too. I'll go to the beach. I don't really hike that much. I used to hike like my freshman year, but now I'm getting a little older and my knees don't feel like it. So I have to keep those healthy for volleyball and I'll just go like relax on the beach sometimes. Yeah, that sounds good. And Kate, I want to ask you, what's something about you that not too many people know about? Something about me? Oh, I'm obsessed with little kids and taking care of them. I'm currently a nanny and I am just obsessed with the little boy that I take care of. So not a lot of people know that. Wow, that's great to hear. I love hearing that actually. So that's actually good practice for later on in life, right? Totally, yeah, totally. Okay, you know, who do you guys have upcoming and how's the rest of the season looking? You know, I'm going to go hard with what Coach Rob always says. It doesn't matter who we have coming up, it just matters what we do on our side of the court. So I'm excited to see, we've been working really hard into practice gym recently. So I'm excited for people to apply what we've been learning and working on and put it out on the court when it comes game day. I love it because I would share with my teams, you know, we need to take care of business on our side of the net. And that's really what you're saying there and Kate, I wanna thank you for taking time to join me on the show today. I mean, you have such a wonderful personality and I felt just great to, you know, expose you more to our community and the world. Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was so cool and I was so nervous because you're Coach Rusty, but thank you so much for having me. Thanks Kate. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit rustycomory.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Kate and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.