 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 the head coach of our University of Hawaii football team. He is Coach Timmy Chang, and today we are going beyond football. Hey, Coach Timmy, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hey, Coach Rusty, thank you for having me today. Now, Coach Timmy, I know many of my viewers might be thinking, you know, where's my suit? Cause I usually wear a suit on my show, but you know, thanks to Tom Park for providing, you know, your shirt and my shirt from the great Kahala Sportswear. I mean, it's so cool. How do you like your shirt? I think we're looking pretty sharp today. Feels comfortable too. You know, we gotta look good to perform good, right? That's what they say, you look good, play good. Now, Coach Timmy, I know that you went to St. Louis. I mean, everybody knows that you went to St. Louis and you were a superstar there, but I want to know how did St. Louis School help to shape your character? You know, St. Louis, all boys, private school here in Hawaii. One thing I noticed going to that school and actually being a ball boy for a lot of the football games as my father was an official was that, you know, they were always competitive and they always brought some of the best talent, you know, from an athletic standpoint, some of the best talent around the island. And so, you know, I love sports, played sports all my life. I didn't play football, believe it or not, early on. I started at seventh grade, but the culture of excellence and having won so many championships and I saw that as a ball boy at a young age and going over there and then kind of seeing it with Coach Cal Lee and some of those, you know, those teams and those great programs and years that they had, you know, when you get to the school, you know, being in it and competing against those guys every single day, just it made you, it made you have to do more and have to sacrifice. You learn how to build a great work ethic. I traveled in from a long way to get there every day as many people do from the West Side of Oahu. And, you know, just having to build time management skills as, you know, I had to wake up early to beat traffic, you know, had to get all my homework done because you spent all day in town and by the time you got home at night, waking up early to beat traffic, you know, you just, you know, you didn't want to do homework. So you just kind of stayed in the library. You've got all your tasks taken care of. And so it just kind of structured you a certain way. And if you wanted to be really good, if you wanted to play, you had to be different. You had to make a lot of sacrifices. You had to train a little bit extra. And it kind of helped my mental game a lot because it forced me, if I wasn't the best athlete, I had to figure it out and try to be better. No, you know, I like hearing all that. I mean, the structure, that's so important. And when you went to the University of Hawaii, why were you and your teammates successful at UH? So just like at St. Louis, you know, we started getting the best talent from all over the state and in all eight islands. As a mix, we would have a very competitive California, Texas, Nevada, Washington, guys that also would come join in, as well as Samoan in Australia and in some of these other places. And we build a melting pot of competitiveness. And because everybody was competitive, because everybody wanted to do well, you know, there was a great culture that was built at St. Louis as well as the University of Hawaii under two really good coaches, Cali and June Jones, that you wanted to be better and you wanted to do the right things. You didn't wanna be, you wanted to do everything right for the guy next to you. You didn't wanna let them fail, you know, because you weren't doing the right. And so I think the culture was unbelievable here. I think there was a bunch of great competitive athletes that wanted to be better every day and worked hard. And before you know it, you know, we all worked together to accomplish one goal and that was to go win. Well, and win you guys did. And it was fantastic watching you, you know, play quarterback during those years, Coach Timmy. And what kind of impact did Coach June Jones have on you? Coach Jones had an amazing impact on my career. And it's just so fortunate, right? You know, he is one of a handful of coaches in the world that coach the run and shoot offense. You know, he learned it from Miles Davis, went to play for Miles at Portland State, you know, ended up playing in the NFL, ended up coaching and he chose the run and shoot offense because he was very successful for that one year at Portland State and record breaking. And just so happens, this little tiny school in the middle of the Pacific, happens to be running the same offense in the same style. And so for me, I'm very fortunate that, and I owe everything to Coach Jones because he chose the University of Hawaii as a place where he wanted to run this offense and build a culture and build a standard of excellence. And he chose the University of Hawaii and just so happened I was down the road and it was my senior year watching him turn an O and 18 program into a cold conference, WAC Conference champion and he became the, became coach of the year that year from doing so well. And so it made my transition very easy. I was very successful at St. Louis and as playing quarterback in the same offense and system that Coach Jones taught. And when I say that there's only a handful of coaches, it's one of the reasons why I became a coach is because no one really knew the system of the run and shoot. And so Coach was an outside the box thinker. He believed in something great and he stood by it. And because of that, I'm so grateful to have been, have played in it, now coaching it. And really when I wanted to get into coaching, he's the first guy that brought me in the door to this coaching fraternity. It's starting my GA at SMU with him. And so he has been an integral part and probably one of the most, if not the most important part of my coaching career besides my parents and other guys like Cal Lee and Ron Lee and Benny Passis as well. But coaches, coach gets all my love and respect from him. I always say that it's everything starts with the head coach or the CEO. And that turnaround that Coach June Jones made at UH was incredible, I mean, just to say the least. Coach, Timmy, how do you describe your coaching style? You know, probably very similar to Coach Jones. You know, Coach Jones talked about coming from a place of love and compassion. You know, that's kind of the best way in my opinion to get the most out of 22 year old student athletes. When they believe in you and they know that you've got their back, they trust you, you know, they're gonna go the extra mile to run through that wall, to try to understand what you want them to accomplish. You know, it's just, it really, football is just a small aspect of life. But you know, you're really trying to teach these guys, you know, everything they're gonna need through sports, through football to accomplish all their goals in life. And so, you know, for me, you know, it's a long-term, it's a life lesson, it's a life relationship that you build with your student athletes here and you hold that dear to your heart because, you know, you're trying to build leaders in the community. You're trying to build, you know, great husbands and fathers, you know, for years to come. And if I can make an impact on a kid here, that's kind of what we want to do as a coaching staff is just, you know, build future men that the community can be proud of. Well, Coach Timmy, you have so much passion. You have so much positive energy. I mean, every time I meet with you, I can feel it and everybody can feel that with you. And I want to know if you can tell me more about how the broader hood started. Yeah, the broader hood started, you know, something, you know, things always kind of start, you know, great things kind of start after things have happened in the past, past experience as you may. And the experience that this program has gone through, you know, is no different than a lot of people and a lot of people's life. But I think the broader hood and the statement that it's making is that, hey, it's our locker room, it's our guys, it's our team, it's our community, right? It's our athletic department. And so the beauty about the broader hood is that it's about everybody. It's about everybody working together and being together and being on the same page and helping each other grow and to accomplish our goal. And our goal is to win. You know, the best thing about it is that the kids came up with it, you know, the athletic department, the kids, they brought this broader hood to reality and they're living it every day by loving each other, being there for each other and just representing this university, this athletic department, this state and this community every day. Well, I love hearing about the broader hood and Coach Timmy, what are your thoughts about the spring game and then the huge support that you had from the community? You know, since I've gone back, the best thing I felt that, and the most rewarding and satisfying thing I felt here is the community support, the engagement, the love, you know, everybody wanting to see their football team, you know, the state's football team. That's what the University of Hawaii is. And they wanted to see this thing grow and become one of the great programs in college sports. And so the overwhelming love and support and, you know, people showing up for Island Day, that was unbelievable. Our kids really felt it, our staff really felt it, our athletic department felt it. And so did our university as, you know, as we, you know, we wanted these things. We've coming off of a tough COVID year, two years, and the restrictions. And to just see everybody out here supporting the team, supporting the program, having a lot of energy, having a lot of fun, you know, and then these Hawaii games, these Hawaii football games, you know, they're best known for being with family, spending a day and time with family where you can love, come and enjoy. It's a family day. And that's what we really wanted to show that it was a family affair that you could come down, but also come support your football team and watch them grow. And did you get to enjoy a little bit of that free concert as well? You know, I did a little bit. You know, we had a full day ourselves. You know, we've had recruits from the state come in and we were with them early in the morning. We've had official visit guys come in and we ended up getting some positive news from them. And then the concert on top of that, we've had some very important people and we're catering to them and loving them up because they love our program. And so it was just a full day of a lot of fun activity and event that we just, we wanted. We really wanted for everybody to come and enjoy. No, and everybody did and we need more of that. And Coach Timmy, you and I know how important mindset is. I wanna ask you, what are you doing to coach your team to have the mindset of champions? You know, it's what we talk about. It's what we do every day. It's giving them examples of perseverance of making great choices. You know, it's their mindset. After that game, after that spring game, it was 124 plays that that team went through and that's a lot. And we still had three practices to go and I knew my guys were hurting. I knew my guys were banged up. And you kind of got to get into football contact shape a little bit, your body's got a bang. They got to get tackled a little bit. So you kind of get used to it, right? But I could tell after the 124 play scrimmage that they were a little banged up. And so before we started practice, we brought them, I brought them all together and I just talked about a mindset. You know, we're all injured and we're all sore. We're all banged up. But the time that we have together is very limited. And we got to make most of our day. We got to make the most of what the time we have. And if we're gonna be a championship team, we got to understand how to practice. We got to understand how to prepare. We got to understand that for a short amount of time, you got to put maximum effort into what you're doing every day and right now we need it. For these next three practices, these next three days, we need maximum effort to be in the place where we want to go. And so, you know, they really responded and we really got through a good practice that day and the next three practices are really good. Yeah, you know, you and I know how important every minute of every day is because it either gets us a little closer to achieving our goals or it doesn't. And coach Timmy, I wanna ask you about character. Tell me about the importance of character for your team as you're building your superior culture of excellence with them. Sure, character is everything in a student athlete. You know, the character that we want our kids to have and what we talk about is, when we're not around, what are you doing to get better? You know, what kind of self-discipline do you have? What type of determination do you have? What type of mindset do you have? And you're building these fundamental blocks and a lot of them, you know, the thing about it is a lot of those characteristic traits, you know, are once developed when they come to us from their guardians, their parents and their family members and their coaches before. But those things also have to be redeveloped and re-talked about, you know, having that mindset and having those great characteristic traits of being hardworking, being diligent, working smarter, you know, and we want those in our kids because at the end of the day, you know, we want them to be great. We want them to have, you know, to have these, you know, these great characteristics where, you know, you're gonna see them succeed in life eventually. Yeah, it's more than football. I mean, you learn a lot about life through sports and Coach Timmy Ryan Tanaka and his Giovanni Pastrami restaurant did a big book donation of my books to your entire team, both books. How does that assist you in you building your culture of excellence with your team? Well, Coach Rusty, your resume speaks for itself, you know, 22 seasons and 22 championships, you know, and the greatness and the things that you talk about in your book are exactly what programs are built on. You know, you've done it and to do it at such a high level, to get your kids to buy in into the individual aspect of growth as well as the team aspect is what we try to grow to accomplish to as coaches ourselves to win championships. You know, we're so grateful for Ryan Tanaka and Giovanni Pastrami for donating these books to our team and our staff at this point is, it has, are in the process of reading it. So before we hand it out to our players, we got, I got our staff reading it and they're gonna go through the learning lessons that you're talking about in both books. And then we get to, when we build our leadership program and during the summer, our development program for the summer, these are, your book is gonna be one of the guidelines that we talk about and what we wanna be and accomplish as a team. And so we're very grateful for Ryan and we're very grateful for you, for one, writing this book and Ryan donating it to our whole team. Well, so coach, Timmy, you know, I'm so happy that you like the books and what's something that's standing out to you in the book so far? You know, I've actually, me and my wife actually picked up beyond the lines together. We're reading chapter two and chapter two talks about a boss versus a leader. And there's some aha moments personally in my life that really, you know, it kind of, you kind of just, it opens, your book opens it up and it kind of just makes you look at yourself, right? And what are you doing? And what can you do to be better? And there's a lot of great things that I do, I think as a leader, as a coach and the leadership role of delegating and helping people and helping people think things through. But, you know, my personal life, I looked at some of those areas and I was acting like a boss in some of these areas. You know, and so, you know, I need to be better. You know, my wife, I love her so much, my wife, Sherry and she, you know, she takes care of our five beautiful kids, you know, ages 11 to one and she does an unbelievable job. And, you know, I need to stop being the boss in that area and being more of a leader and then helping her grow as I do at work. And so, you know, it was great for me personally, you know, and in the book that I got to get, you know, some self-realization here. No, and part of it, Coach Timmy, you know, is for your players to really understand what the coaches go through, what the leaders go through. So they understand both sides. It's not just one side, you know, and I think that's the key thing. And I like that you brought up the boss versus leaders. And I wanna ask you more about your wife Sherry and your kids. Is it true that you have five kids? It is, we have five kids together, you know, and there they are, they're just, you know, these kids have been through and I love them so much, you know, my daughter had a chance to live here, you know, 10 years ago, 11 years ago as a one-year-old and she got to see daddy, you know, working at Mililani High School a little bit with Coach Rod York. And then we went off to our journey, like I talked about going to SMU and we started our journey at SMU. Then the second kid was born and during spring ball in SMU and he was being born in Canada. And then we make our journey, you know, to Jackson State, but I've just taken them all over, you know, the country and now we're back here in my home and now they're home, the beautiful state of Hawaii. And I'm so happy and my heart's full of joy because I have an unbelievable wife and five beautiful babies that get to enjoy this experience with me together. And so it's been awesome. It's been a true blessing. Oh, such a beautiful family coach, Timmy. And I wanna ask you, you know, when you reflect back on your life so far, what's a big adversity that you had to deal with and overcome? You know, probably the first thing that a student athlete gets hit with is injury. You know, and so my sophomore year, I ended up breaking my lunate, scaphoid ligament in my wrist and my thawing wrist. And, you know, that was the first sign of, you know, when you miss sports and all you know is sports in your life, you know, that's a tough deal. And so I didn't know what was going on. Didn't know, you know, how bad of an injury it was. But during that first heat time in your life, it hits you that the game's taken away from you and you can't do anything about it. You know, probably the next, probably another time it would be again is when I retired. You know, when I retired from playing football and transitioning to coaches, I mean, that's a tough deal too, is because all you know is training. All you know is that there's a regiment of this is when I wake up. This is when I go to bed. And this time I'm lifting weights. And this time I'm going to school. And this time I'm studying film. And this time I'm doing this. And that regiment kind of gets taken from you. And you don't know how to redirect or read or transfer that energy or that structure. And so one thing as a student athlete and as an athlete that you understand is you understand discipline, you know, you understand time management, you understand work ethic and how important it is to work hard. And the thing that I needed to do from an athletic standpoint was just kind of put that energy into something else to be great at something else. Yeah, you know, coaching, it's an entirely different realm right there. And when you, again, I wanna ask you a little different question now. What's an important lesson you learned in life so far? You know, probably one of the biggest ones is just controlling what I can control. You know, there's so many different things in life that you may want, that you may have desires and aspirations to becoming goals, you know, obstacles. But the thing that I think I've learned the most is, hey, I have a goal. I know what direction I'm heading. And so I'm just gonna control every single day when I wake up to when I go to bed, you know, what I can control that helped me reach my goals every day. You know, and I'm not gonna reach my goal right away. But if I can, every choice that's made, everything and every aspect that that goal is upon, that choice that I'm making every day, if I can just control those things, eventually I'll get somewhere in that direction and eventually be able to reach it. But I'm not gonna really worry about all the other things that might happen, may happen or are going on around me or what he said or she said. It's really just the things that I have control of that I direct my energy to. And if I can stay in this lane, I can stay in this direction, I know I'll be okay. I completely agree with you 100%. And coach, Timmy, what's the best advice you ever received? The best advice I've ever received, well, it kind of put me on the trajectory. There's just two things. There's two things that happened in my life that were really, you know, one was out of kind of out of my control a little bit. And then the other and talk about control, but this one was the decision was kind of made for me a little bit. And then I'll tell you about this other one. The first one was that when I was in seventh grade and I started to play football, I started as a defensive back. And one of my PE teachers, Paul High Lee, Ron and Cal's nephew was coaching PE at St. Louis. And he told one of my coaches, the late Doug Frias, to move me to quarterback. And so I didn't want to play quarterback. I actually got moved to play quarterback, which sent my life in a whole another trajectory. And so I didn't understand that at the time, but it ended up being really good. The other one was, you know, and I tell recruits this all the time. One of, when I was hanging out with an older graduate of St. Louis graduate of Vine, and he said, hey, Timmy, when choosing the school, choose the school that you're gonna see yourself having an opportunity to play right away. Because he was out of school and he went to the school and he didn't play. He didn't play. He said, I wish I chose somewhere that I knew I was gonna play. Cause the game, again, the game being taken away from you, it's like one of your, as a student athlete, it's like one of your first tests of adversity. Now, how do you deal with that, you know? So he said, hey, go or somewhere that you can play. So it kind of ties into the story that I'm telling you. He was like, coach Jones came in my senior year, same offense that I had. I was running at St. Louis at a very high level. And I saw that happen. And it kind of was like, well, if I can do what I did at St. Louis as I do it through the University of Hawaii. And I seen how the state backed the team and how this team is Hawaii's team, then I'm gonna choose Hawaii. And that sent my trajectory to probably where I am. And it did send, not probably it helped me. It put me in the position I am now, right? You know, just listening to that advice of going, just, hey, go where are you gonna go play? Well, I'm gonna go play here. I wanna live here. I'm gonna play for the home state. And so those two things in combination for my life changed. Well, those are great examples of fantastic advice. And coach Timmy, you are a man of great character. And I wanna thank you for taking time to share insights on the show today. No, thank you for having me, coach Rusty. You know, Ryan, yourself, you guys play big intricate parts to the growth and development of Hawaii's football team, the state's team. And so I am gonna rely on you for a lot of wisdom and knowledge along the way. But I thank you for having me on the show and anything you need for me, you got. You got it. Thanks, coach Timmy. 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 Timmy 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.