Michele Nagamine - Fight and Flight

Each coaching role offers its challenges. Some, however, are more challenging than others.

Coach Michele Nagamine currently holds one of those more challenging roles. Since December 2010, she has been head coach of the women’s soccer program at the University of Hawaii.

They are one of 11 teams in the Big West Conference – the other 10 are all based in California, six hours’ flight away. That means the season is littered with the complexity of air travel, hotels and tailored preparation, on top of the road trips everyone else makes.

“We fly over 20,000 miles a season,” Michele told Women’s Soccer Coaching. “Once we get to the place we’re at, we drive another 1,200 on the ground. So I have zero sympathy for people who take one road trip!

“But that’s the nature of our business. We know what we have to do when we play for Hawaii and when we coach for Hawaii.

“It is a very beautiful place, but a very challenging place to be a coach, just because of our proximity to everybody else.”