 I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou 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 leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is a two-time national championship coach and head coach of our University of Hawaii men's volleyball team. He is Coach Charlie Wade, and today we are going beyond national championships. Hey, Coach Charlie, welcome back to Beyond the Lines. Loha Rusty, thanks for having me on. Good to be here with you. Coach Charlie, I wanna first ask you why did you become a coach? What is it about coaching that you love so much? Yeah, I think first, I had a little league coach that I was really attracted to. Just thought he was a great man and a great father, and so I always kind of wanted to emulate what he's doing, and then as I got into it, I liked teaching and like helping people kind of figure out how to be the best and how to achieve in life. Now, Coach Charlie, I know that you've been a coach for many years, but can you tell me what your first coaching job was and the coaching jobs that you've had up until becoming head coach of our men's volleyball team? Yeah, it might have taken a minute or two, but I was playing at Long Beach City or trying to play at Long Beach City College back in the early 80s, and one of the assistant coaches asked me if I wanted to coach club with them. So I started coaching a girls club team, just like 83, 84, 84, 85. So I did that for a little bit, and then I coached high school at the same time. I had two different high schools where I convinced the AD to let me coach the Frostoff JV and Varsity teams, both boys and girls by myself. I coached all 16s at two different schools, and I did it to get the keys to the gym so I could coach club in the afternoon. The group that I started coaching club with, I ended up starting my own club, and that was around 85, 86, and did a little stint as a division one assistant in 87 and 88 at Cal State Fullerton when I was there finishing my degree and continued to coach club up until 95 when I came to Hawaii in August of 95, and I was Dave Shoji's assistant for 11 years, and continued to coach some club on the girls side at that time, and then January of 2006, I was fortunate enough to become the head coach at the University of Pacific in California and stayed there for three years, and May of 2009, a lifetime dream, coaching came true for me, and I was able to return to University of Hawaii in Manoa, and I've been the head coach here at Hawaii for now, just finished my 13th season and starting our 14th year with the program. Coach Charlie, I like hearing your journey, and what do you see as some of the differences in coaching men versus coaching women? Well, the game's the same. Ultimately, the more people you have on your team that can jump really high and hit really hard, you're better. Serving and passing are really important. If you side out at a higher percentage, they're opponent, then you really have an advantage. So the game's the same, but they're different animals. I'd say the one significant difference at the college level is the difference between four and a half scholarships with the men. That's all we get, 20-something guys, and we only have 4.5 total scholarships. That's an NCAA mandate, and when the women have 12, so you can really can collect a lot more talent on the women's side. They're different animals, like I said. Men want to compete over everything. I have three boys myself. They compete over virtually every bodily function. Anything that goes on, they always want to keep scoring, compete, and women not as much. Men are a little more, like if you're talking to a group of people, and you say, hey, we need to fill in the blank. We need to receive better. We need to defend better. Most guys think you're talking to somebody else, but you have to be very direct. You need to receive serve better. You need to serve better. And girls, almost the other side, if you say we need to do this better, they're a little more like, oh my God, he's talking about me. I got to do this better. Like I said, at the end of the day, the game's the same and just trying to get people to buy into improving their game and being the best version of theirself is really what we shoot for. Now, Coach Charlie, in your 12th season as head coach of our men's volleyball team, you won your first national championship. And this past year was your 13th season and you won back-to-back national championships. What are some of the reasons why you got your teams to win, not just last year, but this past year as well? Yeah, and I think it more speaks to just kind of where we've been over the last six, seven years. We worked on kind of building from the ground up and establishing a good base in terms of the culture and the work ethic. There was some guys that came into the program around that 2014-15 and really helped make a difference. Local boy, like Kobe Kana Take, a super hard worker, Kapunofei, like these are guys that came in and really had a lot of pride in the program and just established a work ethic in the program that was contagious, that they were able to get other guys and virtually everybody in the program to try to be their best. And certainly our message about being the best in everything, being your best in the classroom, in the weight room, in the practice gym, certainly on the court when you're competing, in the locker room as a teammate, in the community, is just being a good person, a good productive member of the community. And really we just kind of built on it since then. Those guys enabled us to build a culture and a foundation that we've been able to continue to build on and we think we're pretty good at what we do in the practice gym in terms of helping guys evolve as players and increase their skill and become smarter players, but ultimately it's about the hard work that's happening by the individuals. I don't get to follow them around. So becoming a champion is not something that you can just show up to practicing it better at. It really has to be a reflection of your lifestyle and that you're committed to being your best in everything 24 seven. Now, Coach Charlie, you and your assistant coaches, you guys have so much trust and respect among each other. Why is it that you guys work so well together? Yeah, I just think that we're, even when there's differences, we recognize that there's way more similarities and we all are there for the same reason to help the players evolve, to become the best versions of themselves, not just as volleyball players, but as young men and hopefully end up being great fathers and great husbands and mentors to young people in their lives and in their community as well. Now, I was with you at your men's volleyball banquet before you guys went to the Big West Championship. And when I spoke with you, you had told me that you had a really great feeling about the team, like you feel that everything was coming together. And then you guys go out there and beat Long Beach to win the Big West. And then you go to the national championship and you beat Long Beach to win the national championship both times in straight sets. How did that make you feel with you and your coaches and your team? Well, obviously it's pretty gratifying to get to the end of the year and you're playing the best teams and there's a reason the volleyball matches are played three out of five because it's hard to beat a team three zero. Long Beach and Hawaii have a great history and tradition. We've played each other so many times in the last few years for really significant matches when we're playing our league games in the regular season. Inevitably one of us are ranked number one and sometimes we're one and two. So they're always ultra competitive matches and we ended up playing each other for league championships and have now played each other twice for national championship. So it was a high degree of familiarity with their style of play and what they like doing. And we really kind of dialed in this year on the Scatter Report. We thought we had pretty locked in and obviously to win six straight sets in two championship settings was a lot of fun for sure. Now, Coach Charlie, before really going on the court for that national championship match against Long Beach, let's say within an hour before the match starts, what is the mindset like among your team? I mean, what are they feeling? What are they thinking before going out there? Yeah, I think we were pretty loose and pretty excited to go play. We had just played them less than two weeks earlier for the Big West Championship and obviously it went our way 3-0 and we don't talk a lot about it. We just talk about what we have to do to compete but I know I felt going into it that if we do what we do and they do what they do, we'll win. I don't think you're gonna win 3-0 expecting a really competitive match but it was similar going into the BYU match in 2021 with the national championship match. The problem or the concern is each of those teams had one guy that can wreck it, like a guy that can go back to the service line for BYU is Debbie Garcia and certainly for Long Beach this year, Alex Nikolov who was national player of the year. They're so good and so talented that that guy goes off from the service line or you just can't stop him, then we're not gonna win but we were able to slow him down and contain him and like he said, so going into the match we're pretty excited and looking to get out and compete and do what we do. Well, you and your coaches have done such a masterful job preparing your team. I mean, for them to rise to the occasion in both tournaments was incredible. I watched both of those matches and Coach Charlie, I wanna talk with you about a little bit about my books. As you know, I talk a lot about leadership and coaching but what are some of the things that you feel the greatest coaches, the greatest leaders do to achieve success? Yeah, that was a journey I was on early in my career to kind of gather as much information as I can to learn from people who are successful. And it wasn't just coaches but in the business world as well. So, I read a lot of Wooden and Shoshesky and then books from business side of the world like Good to Great and Built to Laugh, some of the Malcolm Gladwell stuff, the 10,000 hour rule and then even into the concepts of myelination and how to develop motor skills and stuff. And just the kind of nuts and bolts of the coaching stuff and the business, what I picked out of it was the things to that were important where, figure out what's important. You focus on things that are important to you and they have to kind of mirror your personality, your values. Because if you pick stuff that you're not really about or aren't really who you are, it won't be real, it won't be as meaningful. And then to try to get the, who's ever in front of you on a team or in a business setting to have them to focus on the things they control. So it's figure out what's important, focus on what you can control. We make it easier for the guys, we tell them what's important. We've identified the things in our culture that we want them focusing on and then just having them stay focused on those things from the time their feet hit the ground in the morning to their bed hits the pillow, their head hits the pillow at night. If they stay focused on the things that we've identified, we feel pretty good that they're gonna end up being successful, like I said, in the classroom, in the weight room, in the practice gym and the results speak for themselves. We've been on a pretty ascended phase and feel pretty good about the culture that we've developed and the results we've been able to produce. Coach Charlie, I wanna talk with you more about this culture of excellence that you just mentioned. I mean, you've created a superior culture of excellence and I absolutely love that. Now, what are some of those specific things that you want your guys to do in that culture? Yeah, give a little historical perspective. I was an assistant coach for a long time. You know, you always think about, okay, when I'm the head coach, I wanna do it like this. And I always thought of kind of building this kind of leadership model. And so when I went to Pacific, I kind of mutated the Pacific word mark into an acronym, AFPAC. And it was the Academic Fitness Passion Attitude Choices. And then when I came back to Hawaii, I used the same concept and it was VazTAC. It was volleyball, academic strength, teeness energy choices. These are all things that the players can focus on themselves. And then when, I wanna say around 2016, 15, 16, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Judge Thomas Kalkakui, who's just a great mentor in Hawaiian culture. And so for me, my sons, my children have Hawaiian blood in them. And I've been so blessed to live in Hawaii and the state of Hawaii has given me so much. I think it's so important to teach Hawaiian language and Hawaiian culture to all these young men that I bring in from all over the world. So we sat down with Judge Kalkakui and he helped us kind of rebrand the VazTAC into alakai. And you may know that alakai is the Hawaiian word for leader and it is this leadership matrix. And then each of those became, akamai is academics and lo-kahi is teamwork. The second A is a KU, which is skill and really developing the practice gym. The K is kuleana and having the responsibility to do the things that you, to be a good member of the community and to live your life responsibly. The third A is a KU, which is energy, the mana, the spirit of kuu. And then finally, I is ikaika, the strength, you know, a combination of, you know, how you've progressed in terms of running faster, jumpin' higher and hitting harder. So this alakai, those six things inside alakai are really what we want the guys focusing in on a daily basis. And they've bought in, it's been fun for them to learn about Hawaiian language and Hawaiian culture and it's really kind of been a nice enough foundation for us to set our focus and our training on a daily basis. I love hearing all of that, Coach Charlie. And last month I had one of your former players on Colton Cowell and he said that your guys' practices are so tough. And I completely agree that practices have to be tough so that the matches, the games are easy. Now, what is a typical practice day like with your team? Yeah, I don't, you know, we've surprisingly, I think a lot, we don't go for a super long time. You know, we try to go hard the time they win there and we'll go longer in the fall, like in the pre-season, you know, maybe two and a half hours, we rarely go three hours. And then when we get into the end of the season, you know, like I said, there's a finite number of jumps and of swings that these guys have in their arms and legs and we back off and it's very common for us to go 90 minutes or less and some days, even an hour or less at the end of the season where we just wanna stay sharp. I really think the competitive part comes from the standard that we set. Like when you're there, you have to be engaged. You know, you have to be going hard physically, mentally, emotionally. It's not, we're not just there to kind of go through the motions and then the competitive level where we literally have the best of the best on a global level. We have players that are representing countries all over the world and these guys are all driven to become one of the best players in the world. And that level of competitiveness where we'll have, you know, multiple position battles going on throughout the year, it really rises the level of play and our, you know, the level of play in our practice gym is extremely high. You know, you mentioned earlier about how we were playing well at the end of the season. Even as early as early April, we were still having like competitive battles for starting positions in the practice gym. And it kept everybody ultra sharp and ultra competitive. And then as we got into the last couple of weeks of the season, it really kind of came into the view and like, okay, here's what the starting line that's gonna be, here's what the rotation is gonna be in terms of substitution and how people are contribute. Everybody bought into their role. And at the end we were, we may not have had like the best player, but we were clearly the best team. Now, right there, you said everybody bought into their role, how do you, what do you do to get everyone to buy in to your coaching philosophy? Well, it's, well, I'd say it's not always everybody, right, it's the goal, but you always have somebody that might be a little disgruntled and we try to, we meet regularly with the guys individually outside of practice. They come up to the office and we're always kind of checking in to see what's going on. And if I sense that there's someone and I've been doing it long enough to kind of be able to see which guys might start to drift away from the group a little bit, start to think about themselves a little bit more than the team and try to address that with them and resolve those kind of conflicts. And ultimately, we try to identify it early enough that if someone does seem to be more concerned about them than the team, about their role and what they're doing, in one of those Jim Collins books, Good to Great, Built to Last, I think it was Good to Great where they talk about making sure you have the right people on the bus and the right people are in the right seats on the bus. And that also includes sometimes of getting people off the bus. So if you see somebody that's a little too, much concerned about them, their role and where their seat is on the bus, it's usually time for them to get off the bus. Oh, I completely agree with you. But see right there, you have such awareness and you know the pulse and the vibe of your team. And Coach Charlie, I always say that I wanted my players to practice how they play and play how they practice. And I know you do the same, but that's easier said than done. How do you make sure that your players in practice will have that same type of mentality, the same type of intensity as they should in a match and vice versa? Yeah, and that's again, I mean, easier said than done. I think I would say two-fold. One, having the leaders, and it's not only the most veteran guys, the guys that have been there the longest, but guys who are statistical leaders or emotional leaders, having them hold each other accountable. You know, one of the things that I say a lot is, I don't know what you're thinking, but I know what it looks like you're thinking. And we can all tell when somebody's like super engaged and confident, let's do this. And you can tell when a guy's a little pouty, like, oh, what was me? And if, you know, and so when you see someone's body language and their energy level starts to dip, certainly I can draw their attention to it, but it's much more impactful when one of their teammates, you know, grabs them either figuratively or literally like, hey, let's go, let's keep competing here. So I think the internal leadership that we have of the guys in the program and having the confidence to be able to share those observations that they're making, you know, and ultimately that's what we do in the practice gym. You know, one of the things I've said, our role as coaches is to elevate performance. We are trying to elevate performance in all ways, always. That's what we do. Coach Charlie, how would you define your leadership style? Um, yeah, that might be better. Like over the players to define. I think that over time, I've got a lot more patient. I've got three kids and so I think that it's evolved over time. I think I have a very clear image on what, and I say this, you know, often what practice should look like, sound like, smell like. You can just tell when you're in there and you can tell the level of engagement and it's very clear. I know the style of play that I want, you know, we value production and efficiency. I think we focus on efficiency more than most teams because ultimately you can't shrink the game for the opponent, you know, you have to, make it a lot of errors is a recipe for failure. And we try to be really, like I said, really efficient and having the same staff for a long time, I think has helped also where we have consistency. We know what we're doing in the practice gym and we said ultimately the results have spoke for themselves. You know, for me, one of the biggest challenges that I wanted to instill in my players was self-discipline. And because, you know, we can't be with our players 24-7 but when they're on their own, they need to be having self-discipline because that leads to habits which leads to success. Now, what are some daily self-disciplines that you would want to see your players do on a daily basis? Yeah, I mean, there's so many of them in self-discipline and I would extend that to self-awareness just to be conscious of your actions, your thoughts, your words. Your body language is so important, like what you're telling the world without saying anything. And ultimately, you're responsible for your level of engagement, you know, for all those things I just mentioned. And, you know, the things that we want them focused on to be disciplined about are the same values that we've set out in this Alakali matrix that you're gonna be the best in the classroom, in the practice gym, in the weight room, and then you're gonna be a good teammate. You're gonna have great energy when you show up in the practice gym. These are the things that we want them focused on and having the discipline to recognize that you can't pick and choose which ones, on which days you're gonna be good. You gotta be trying to be good at all six of them all the time. And you can't just do it when people are watching. It has to become a part of who you are and really that obsession with success, that commitment to excellence defines you. It's who you are and not just something that you're gonna do when you're around the team and everybody's watching. Yeah, and I like that you said that because it's all about character. And for me as a coach, one of my number one priority was to develop champion athletes of character first and then great tennis players second. And I can see you doing that same exact thing. What are your thoughts about the importance of character? Yeah, clearly, that's why, you know, we've been, if not the only, certainly one of very few teams that competes at the highest level that our team gets recognized for the great point average. You know, they've really bought in to be in their best and everything we put in front of them. Like I said, I don't follow them around and I'm not naive enough to think that these are all choir boys, you know, but I think they are men of character and they're going to be successful in every endeavor they choose and they're going to be good fathers and good husbands and good productive members of the community and successful in every walk of life they choose. Now, Coach Charlie, behind the scenes, I mean, the fans, I mean, they see what you guys do on the court when you guys are playing these matches or they might see what you do in practices. What do you do behind the scenes? How much time in preparation do you and your assistant coaches spend really preparing strategy tactics and watching film? Yeah, I mean, it's a fair amount and obviously towards the end of the season, it's a lot more and even going into a team like Long Beach though, it was almost a little less because we played them so, you know, four times in the last couple of weeks or last month. So high degree of familiarity and sometimes less is more, you know, you don't need to outthink the room. So I think the overall level of preparation, you know, we try to give for the same opponent. We know what we need to do. We know what we need to identify. And once we've got that, you know, kind of identified then okay, let's go. I don't think, like I said, sometimes less is more. I don't think you need to overdo it. We know when we got it dialed in and got a good feel on what's gonna happen and once the ball's in the air, you let it fly. Coach Charlie, when you reflect back on your coaching career so far, what's a valuable lesson you've learned? You know, that you can't solve everything at once and you can't fight all battles, you know. Again, you just kind of stay focused on the stuff in front of you and sometimes things that might seem like a big deal in the moment that if you let it kind of unfold a little bit and gather more information, that it will resolve itself and you didn't have to get in the middle of something that was just gonna resolve itself anyway. Now, winning the last two national championships back to back, what's the biggest challenge for you as a coach right now? Yeah, I mean, for us, it's kind of the same what we've been doing is, you know, just to try to maintain the level of success. You know, like I said, we've got a good plan. We kind of know what we got going on and just having that consistency. Keep trying to find little ways to improve, you know. Even though we've been the best team at the end of the last two years, I think, you know, we're still having discussions and talking about little things that we can do just to be a little bit better on a daily basis and make our players better and also really make our program better. Yeah, I completely agree because it's all about those little things. How can you be a little bit smarter, a little bit stronger, a little bit faster, maybe blocking a little bit better, hitting better? Coach Charlie, you have achieved greatness. You've seen greatness. How do you define greatness? Yeah, I would think, you know, it's really keeping your mind clear of what's important to you, you know, the things that you have identified that you want to, the path that you wanna go down to be the best. And sometimes identifying that path can take a little time, but, and if for everyone can be a little different, but once you are on the path that you stay committed to the path that you've chosen and believe in yourself and believe in the things that you're doing are gonna lead you to greatness. And, you know, then once you've kind of been able to see it and taste it and experience it, keep striving to maintain it. And that's the hard part. A lot of times people get a sense of their success and hey, you know, we got it, we got it, we got it. And it's like, you don't have it, you know, you got to, you get close to it and you may grab it, but you gotta be able to have that discipline and have the consistency to maintain it. Yeah, yesterday's home runs don't win today's games. And Coach Charlie, it was such a pleasure talking with you and really hearing the insights. And I know I speak for the entire Hawaii saying how proud we are of you and your team that you've created this incredible culture. And it's just, it's not just the national championships. It's the character, it's the culture that you've really created through these years and really wanna thank you for joining me on the show today. Right on Rusty, thank you. It's very kind of you to say and thanks for having me on today, I appreciate it. Thanks Coach Charlie. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Coach Charlie and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.