Breaking News
Local Sports

MIL championship marks end of era for Yamamotos

By Robert Collias 4 min read

KAHULUI -- Today marks the end of an era in the Yamamoto family and Maui Interscholastic League swimming and diving.

Mari Yamamoto will participate in MIL championship qualifying, at Kihei Aquatic Center, for the final time. Saturday's finals will be her final high school swimming meet on Maui.

Yamamoto is a Maui High School senior and has been accompanying her father Reid Yamamoto to swimming pools around the Valley Isle since she was 3 months old.

"I used to carry the crib, the diaper bag, everything and then when she got older ... she was there," Reid Yamamoto said. "She pretty much grew up with the swim team, she's been around the water, been around the pool for all her life basically.

"For me, I think she learned how to swim by just watching."

As a baby, Mari was a magnet to the teenaged girls swimmers who her father was coaching. Now, she is a team leader for the Sabers.

"I'm mostly excited, just looking back at how far everyone has come," Mari Yamamoto said at practice at Kokua Pool on Tuesday. "Through the pandemic, it's really cool to see how we got a season this year. I'm kind of sad that we didn't get a season last year for our seniors, but we're going to try to make them proud by swimming as well as we can."

Reid Yamamoto has guided many of the Valley Isle's top swimmers over his three-decade career with Hawaii Swim Club and Maui High, but he knows that emotions are likely to catch up to him when the MIL championships wrap up Saturday afternoon.

As is traditional, a senior class recognition ceremony for all of the league's 12th-graders will follow the meet.

Also as usual, Laurie Yamamoto, often a timer at meets, will be there watching her daughter and husband in their element.

"I'm going to try to be even keeled," Reid Yamamoto said. "It's going to be, of course, pretty sad because it's her last high school meet on Maui and plus I have to coach the rest of the team, so I can't really be that emotional.

"It'll definitely be kind of sad, yeah."

Mari Yamamoto will be there to keep her father in check.

She clearly has a calming effect on the Sabers team as her dad often comes close to losing his voice, especially at championship meets, while yelling for his pupils to go in an unmistakable "Hup, hup, hup" that can be heard well outside the pool during his swimmers' races.

"It has always been pretty normal, I feel like I have a good sense of when he is talking to me as a coach and when he's talking to me as my dad," Mari Yamamoto said. "At the pool, I just see him as my coach. Everyone asks me that and I don't really have anything to say -- I call him 'Coach Reid' at the pool."

Reid Yamamoto has always tried to make sure that he kept the line clear between dad and coach with his only child.

"I always tried to make sure I was coach at the pool and dad right when we got in the car," Reid Yamamoto said. "It's been done, you know, Kiki (Matsumoto) at Maui Swim Club, (former Baldwin water polo coach) Shawn (Donohue) did it with Maverick and Jacsen. So, I knew it could be done, but it's not easy.

"There are times I've had to bite my lip and say, 'Hey, you're in that boat. Just knock it off.' "

His daughter might swim in college, at either Chapman or Whitman, or maybe just focus on academics at Oregon State or University of Hawaii.

She might follow the same coaching path that her dad, a former standout swimmer at UH, has traveled.

"If she does, that'd be awesome -- I told her that she can take over this branch (of Hawaii Swim Club)," Reid Yamamoto said. "She just laughed. She's definitely got the attitude for it, pretty even keeled. ... I think she'd be a great coach because she's experienced everything."

Reid Yamamoto sees close MIL team title races for both boys and girls this weekend. He routinely charts out the meet after seeing the entries and in 2020 he guided the Sabers boys to their first team title since 1994.

"There's a lot of parity this year," Reid Yamamoto said. "You have a lot of the teams with two to three good swimmers, so I think it's going to be anybody's race, in boys and girls."

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.

Starting at /week.