Shattered, not broken

One motorcycle ride changed Reed Sunahara’s whole life.

He rode a motorcycle because parking was difficult in Los Angeles and the bike made it easier for him to get to places like the beach, class at UCLA and practice for the men’s volleyball team.

Sunahara was entering his senior season for the Bruins, who were ranked No. 1 nationally and coming off four straight national championships. Former UCLA head coach, Al Scates, said Sunahara was the best outside hitter in the country at that time.

While riding home down a dark street home on a Friday night, Oct. 5, 1984, Sunahara saw a car begin to pull out of a driveway. He tried to turn to avoid the car but to no avail; his leg was crushed between his gas tank and the car’s right rear bumper. He was just two blocks away from his apartment.

Sunahara’s leg was broken in five places. He was in the hospital for six weeks and in cast for 10. His leg healed crooked, however, so the doctors had to re-break it to put a steel rod in.

Sunahara was unable to help UCLA compete for its fifth straight national championship and go out with the rest of the senior class, as he medically redshirted the 1985 season. He recovered to return to the court for the Bruins in 1986 and played professionally in Spain for a year, but he was never the same player after the injury.

“My Olympic dreams were shattered because of that,” Sunahara said. “But I’m in a good place now and I can’t look back … I think it helped me get started in my coaching career. I think things happened for a reason and maybe that was it.”

Although the accident hindered his chances of playing at the Olympic level, it also veered him down his path of coaching at UCLA, Toledo, Cincinnati and for USA Volleyball; a path that has now led him to Buffalo as the new head coach of the volleyball team.

After winning three national championships as a player, Sunahara is taking over a program that has struggled since joining the Mid-American Conference and never made the NCCA Tournament. With his 12 years of coaching experience at Cincinnati and experiences travelling across the world with USA Volleyball over the past year, Sunahara is ready for his next challenge: Building a championship contender in Buffalo.

***

Ricci Luyties and Sunahara had plans to lift weights on the morning of Oct. 6, 1984. Sunahara did not show or call, which Luyties said was not like him to do. Luyties found out later that night that his UCLA teammate had been in an accident on his bike and was in the hospital.

“People couldn’t even look at it,” Luyties, who is currently the UC San Diego women’s volleyball head coach, said of Sunahara’s leg. “When he would take off the bandages, he just had this huge hole in his leg that you could basically see through to the bone … It was horrific.”

Sunahara’s leg was completely crushed. The injury became infected while he was lying in the street waiting for the paramedics to arrive. Scates and Sunahara’s teammates thought he might never play again. Despite the severity of the injury, Sunahara did not share his teammates and coach’s concerns because he said he felt “invincible.” But things changed as time went on.

“The longer I stayed in the hospital the more it was sitting in the back of mind it could be over,” Sunahara said. “I felt bad because we had just won three national championships my first three years. Then going into that season we were favored to win and it just didn’t happen.”

Sunahara’s injury was devastating for the rest of the Bruins, as well, as he had developed into one of UCLA’s best players with his leaping ability.

His leaping ability, combined with his height – Sunahara was 6 foot 4 in high school – allowed him to dominate at the front of the net, blocking shots and attacking on offense. Sunahara’s nickname on the team was the “The Flyin’ Hawaiian,” and he “was jumping so high he was hitting the ball with his chest above the net,” according to Scates.

When he first arrived at UCLA from his native Hawaii, Sunahara was “a skinny little kid and could just jump like crazy,” according to Luyties. Sunahara added power to his game by lifting weights, however, allowing him to become “the best outside hitter in the country” and “the main cog on the team,” according to Scates and Luyties.

Sunahara had developed into the one of the leaders on the team, as well. Although shy when he first arrived at UCLA, he became one of the more social players on the team.

“Coming off the island, he was really quiet at first but then once he came out of his shell, he was always a social guy,” Luyties said. “He got the teammates together for gatherings. Back in the day we would have some beers or whatever as a group and Reed was usually the instigator of all those things.”

After winning three national championships and losing just four games total in Sunahara’s first three years, the Bruins lost eight games and failed to repeat as champions in 1985 without one of their leaders and best players.

It was during that time that Sunahara got his first coaching experience.

Sunahara assisted Scates and encouraged his teammates from the sidelines, as he attended Bruins’ home games and was able to travel with the team during the 1985 season.

Once the steel rod straightened his leg and he could tell he was able to walk again, Sunahara knew he was going to get back on the court.

And a year after nearly losing his leg, Sunahara did return to the court for the Bruins.

“It would have ended most people’s careers,” said Wally Martin, Sunahara’s teammate at UCLA. “He went on to play at UCLA and play professionally and do a lot of things that not a lot of people would have even tried.”

But Sunahara was not the same person he was before the injury. The injury would have been damaging for any athlete, but for a player like Sunahara – who relied so much on his leaping ability – the injury was even more devastating.

“He had half the vertical jump he had before,” Scates said. “He was never the same player again … He just couldn’t elevate the way he used to.”

Instead of representing the United States in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea alongside his former UCLA teammates Luyties, Doug Partie, Dave Saunders and Kirch Kiraly, Sunahara played professionally in the Canary Islands. The 1988 U.S. team won gold.

“[Sunahara’s injury] really pretty much took any chance of [him making the Olympic team] away,” Luyties said.

After playing professionally, Sunahara was unsure of what was next. When asked of his plans by Scates, Sunahara told his former coach he would probably just return to Hawaii and try to find a job. Scates offered him a job as an assistant coach at UCLA.

For the next four seasons, Sunahara learned how to coach volleyball from Scates, who is the all-time winningest volleyball coach in NCAA history with 19 championships – the most of any coach in any sport. UCLA was national champions again in 1993.

But Sunahara’s opportunity to become a head coach did not come in men’s volleyball. It would ultimately be the women’s game where Sunahara made a name for himself as a successful head coach.

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Sunahara was brought to UB’s campus during a blizzard.

After having interviews with Athletic Director Danny White and Senior Associate Athletic Director Kathy Twist, Sunahara flew into Buffalo on Jan. 5 during what he described as a “whiteout.” His plane almost couldn’t land due to poor visibility.

Sunahara, who grew up in Papaikou, Hawaii and spent the past year living in Anaheim, California, where the USA Volleyball team is based, said the weather was the biggest adjustment he’s had to make since arriving in Buffalo.

“People keep telling me ‘Hey, this is never like this.’ They keep saying it and it remains to be seen,” Sunahara said. “It’s all relative though. It was 55 degrees [in California] and people were wearing parkas and gloves and Uggs and hats and scarfs. The weather reporter was like ‘It’s freezing here in California.’ It’s 55 degrees [in Buffalo] and people are in shorts.”

Sunahara said he is thankful that volleyball is an indoor sport and that he can come into his office and remove the layers of clothing needed during a Buffalo winter. He sometimes even wears Hawaiian-styled or Aloha shirts while coaching.

Despite living in Buffalo through the winter, Sunahara appears to have kept his West coast tan. Sunahara, who is Japanese American, has also retained his height from his playing days, as he still towers over most people.

Although he grew up in warm weather and amongst the beaches in Hawaii, Sunahara was not always a volleyball player. He played basketball and was originally not open to the idea of playing a different sport on the hardwood of Hilo High School.

A basketball teammate first told Sunahara he should play volleyball in the fall to get ready for basketball, to which he declined. Sunahara dodged calls from the Hilo volleyball coach, until finally he decided to give the sport a try.

Sunahara had always dreamed of playing basketball for UCLA; it would be volleyball, however, that earned him a scholarship to his dream school and allowed him to suit up for the Bruins after Scates witnessed his leaping ability at a high school tournament and offered him a scholarship.

Just as Sunahara needed convincing to play volleyball, he also needed encouragement to switch over to coaching the women’s game.

After serving as an assistant for Scates at UCLA for several seasons, a job opportunity as an assistant coach for the Toledo women’s volleyball team, who play in same conference as Buffalo, then presented itself to Sunahara.

Sunahara originally only wanted to coach the men’s game, until Greg Giovanzzi, a former UCLA volleyball player and assistant coach during Sunahara’s Bruins career who died in 2012, convinced him otherwise.

“My really good friend, the great Giovanzzi, said ‘Hey, you got to get into women’s volleyball because that’s the way to go,’” Sunahara said. “I said, ‘No. Why? I would rather coach guys.’ He said there was a lot more opportunities, pretty good money [in women’s volleyball]. I looked into it and I got hired as the assistant at Toledo.”

Sunahara had never coached women before, so he called his friend Liz Masakayan, a former UCLA and Olympic women’s volleyball player and asked her for advice. Masakayan told him to “just treat them like athletes,” according to Sunahara.

“So that’s what I did,” Sunahara said. “There are some differences because of the gender but if you treat them like athletes and treat them like people I think it’s the same. But the women’s game is catching up the men’s game so I really think it’s close and a fun time to be a women’s coach.”

The women’s game is where Sunahara made his mark as a coach. After serving as an assistant coach and then head coach of Toledo for two years, Sunahara went on to coach the women’s volleyball team at Cincinnati.

In 12 seasons as the head coach of Cincinnati, Sunahara complied a 289-109 record and led the Bearcats to three Conference USA championships and three Big East championships after Cincinnati changed conferences in 2005. Despite his success, Sunahara resigned after the 2012 season.

“I think it was time for me to leave,” Sunahara said. “I had other opportunities. The national team was a great opportunity … Cincinnati was great. I loved the opportunity there. Wherever I am I’m going to do the best I can.”

***

Sunahara said he has “been pretty much everywhere in the world.”

He got his first experience living outside the United States when playing professionally for Cisneros Isla Verdes in Tenerife, the largest Canary Island in Spain. Sunahara said it was difficult, however, because there were no computers and programs like Skype and FaceTime to communicate with his family.

He used a payphone to talk to his parents, and friends back home would send him books and cassette tapes for his Walkman. He read USA Today “front to back a couple times every day” to keep up with news back home. Although Sunahara said it was a great year for him, he said he also did a lot of soul-searching, too.

“You don’t realize what you have here in the U.S.,” Sunahara said. “It was pretty neat because I finally realized you don’t take things for granted and what we have is great and never lose sight of what we have and why we have it.”

Sunahara had the opportunity to travel overseas again after leaving Cincinnati and accepting a job as an assistant coach for the U.S. Women’s National Volleyball team. Sunahara’s team won the Pan American Cup in Leima, Peru, and traveled to Bermuda and Serbia among other places before winning the silver medal in the Grand Championships in Tokyo, Japan.

Sunahara has also been to Argentina, China, Austria, Slovenia, Italy and Brazil. He enjoys reading and researching a country before he visits it, and says some of his favorite experiences travelling include driving past Mt. Fuji in Japan and watching the World Cup at the FIFA Fan Fast in Italy in 2007.

Despite the travelling opportunities coaching USA Volleyball gave him, it was difficult for Sunahara to see his children, who live in Cleveland. Becoming head coach of Buffalo, which is less than 200 miles from Cleveland, has given Sunahara more opportunities to see his family.

While sitting in his office in Alumni Arena on the morning of his son’s 14th birthday, Sunahara said he would be hanging out with his son later that day. He said that if he had still been with USA Volleyball and living in California, he would not have able to share his son’s birthday with him.

Besides proximity to his children, Sunahara was also attracted to the opening in Buffalo because of “the wings,” in addition to the athletic administration leadership of White and Twist. After the firing of former Buffalo volleyball head coach Todd Kress, Sunahara was contacted about the head coaching vacancy. Sunahara always at least listens to an opportunity.

Despite being exposed to the brutal Buffalo winter, the Hawaiian-native felt at home upon arriving on campus and meeting with White and Twist.

“I think [UB is] a good place to be right now,” Sunahara said. “Danny’s mission is great and I like what he’s doing and where he’s taking this program, this athletic department. When they offered me the job I said, ‘This is where I want to be,’ because they just made me feel at home and they had the same vision I did and the same goals so for me it was no-brainer.”

Sunahara feels that with the group of coaches at Buffalo, including men’s and women’s basketball head coaches Bobby Hurley and Felisha Legette-Jack and baseball head coach Ron Torgalski, the overall athletic department is headed on the right track.

Sunahara understands the difficult task ahead in turning around the volleyball program around. The team has never finished .500 or better in MAC play. Last season with a talented senior class – which included MAC Defensive Player of the Year Kelly Svoboda – the team started 12-0 but went just 6-10 in conference play.

Sunahara plans to implement what he has learned coaching across the country and across the world. He had to build up the program at Cincinnati, which he says he did through hard work and recruiting the right kind of players.

“It was hard at first because no one really knew who Cincinnati was,” Sunahara said. “Once we got better and people started to realize we made a name for ourselves and we got good recruits and had kind of a breakthrough so we were fortunate … When you work hard and you put in the time and when the players get better, that’s when you’re going to get better. That’s what I’m trying to do here.”

Sunahara liked what he saw out of the Bulls during the spring season, believing the team has a good foundation to work from because they are athletic and are open to his philosophy. Sunahara got additional time to work with perhaps the Bulls’ best player: junior outside hitter Tahleia Bishop.

Sunahara, Bishop and Bulls’ assistant coach Donald Gleason represented Team Jamaica in the World Championship Qualifiers in Mississauga, Ontario in May. In the bronze medal match, Bishop had eight kills to help the Jamaican National Team defeat the U.S Virgin Islands and earn its first-ever medal in women’s indoor volleyball.

Sunahara agreed to coach Team Jamaica in order to coach Bishop, as he wanted to work with her in a competitive game setting. He hopes Bishop can implement what she learned in the international game and bring it back to UB to use to her advantage.

Sunahara wants all of his players to have international volleyball experience, as he hopes to take the Bulls overseas to compete next season. In addition to implementing the international game, he also wants his players to be versatile.

Sunahara said that players have to be “all-around players” in the men’s game due to substitution rules. Men’s players have to play every position on the court and able to serve, defend and attack; not just focus on one aspect of the game. He wants the Bulls to be volleyball players, instead of a specialized player who can only do one thing.

Despite the program’s lackluster history, Sunahara wants to be the first Buffalo team to advance to the NCAA Tournament and advance as far in the tournament as possible.

“My expectation is high because if it’s not, we’re never going to get better,” Sunahara said.

His accident may have ended his chances of winning a gold medal and another national championship as a player, but Sunahara won’t let that hold him back from trying to bring hardware to Buffalo as a coach.

email:sports@ubspectrum.com