At the National Girls and Women in Sports Day basketball game against Los Altos High School on Tuesday, Feb. 4, senior and shooting guard Miya Kosakura was thrilled to hear cheers from her students at Tri-City Youth Group, a Japanese-American basketball organization for kids. From a coaching perspective, it was a full circle moment for Kosakura’s students to watch her play for a change and what she calls a great memory for her high school career.
Since kindergarten, Kosakura has been involved with Community Youth Service, an Asian-American organization for children to learn and develop sports skills such as dance, basketball and volleyball. Her parents were also a part of other sports organizations around the Bay Area during their childhood, prompting them to send Kosakura and her two older sisters to CYS. Kosakura emphasizes how the organization taught her communication and technical skills that benefited her basketball career.
“CYS is a recreational league, so it’s all for fun,” Kosakura said. “It was solely to build those fundamental skills of dribbling, shooting and more importantly, the community aspect and working as a team.”
Similar to Kosakura, senior Jamie Garcia played for the American Youth Soccer Organization from kindergarten until third grade, and later volunteered as a coach for a girls team in her sophomore year of high school. Garcia explains how AYSO made her realize her love for soccer as a player and created a win-win situation for her as a coach.
“Being in AYSO truly made me grow as a player and make mistakes,” Garcia said. “I also really enjoy working with younger kids. I have a little sister and younger cousins and I like babysitting. I think that’s really a joy of mine and it’s also soccer, so it’s the best of both worlds.”
MVHS parent George Chong, is also the president of the Cupertino Little League, a worldwide organization that promotes baseball for young kids. He has held this position for three years and was previously a board member as well. Chong emphasizes that due to the predominantly Asian population in Cupertino, one of the organization’s goals is to educate the Asian community about the sport of baseball.
“A lot of these people have not grown up in baseball,” Chong said. “Our desire is to be a place where not only can kids learn, but parents can learn. Some of the new programs we have going in recent years have been coach development, because it’s hard to find coaches. We know that we need to work with our community and fill the gap, which is, ‘How do we teach people to know the sport, love the sport and then teach the sport?’”
Kosakura also grew up in a large Japanese-American community in San Jose, attending preschool and playing basketball games every Sunday at CYS with her peers. Now, as an assistant coach for the Japanese-American girls in TCYG, she hopes her students look up to her.
“There are no female coaches there, so I’m the only one that I feel they could relate to,” Kosakura said. “They always have these older dads telling them what to do, so just having a female role model is something I hope that they would appreciate.”
Besides teaching kids valuable lessons that they can use later in life, Chong finds it rewarding to witness the growth of the members from a young age to high school with their parents, establishing a beloved camaraderie between adults and kids.
“I get a chance to watch these kids grow, since baseball is not an easy sport to pick up,” Chong said. “It gives me joy just to be an observer, seeing them grow into something where they struggle, learn, grow and get confidence. It also brings me joy to be an administrator, to be a board member and to facilitate such a community.”
