UH Hilo alumnus Gene Okamura, from student-athlete to award-winning coach at his alma mater
Coach Okamura started out as a student-athlete at UH Hilo on the inaugural men’s soccer team in 2006. In 2022, he coached his alma mater’s women’s soccer team to unprecedented status.
By Maisie Paulson, student writer for UH Hilo Stories and a forward/defender on the UH Hilo women’s soccer team.
Great news keeps coming from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo women’s soccer program. This fall season, after repeating as Pacific West Conference Champions and earning back-to-back conference Coach of the Year honors, the program can now add West Region Staff of the Year to its accomplishments as announced last Friday by the United Soccer Coaches.
The driving force behind all this success is Coach Gene Okamura, a humble but focused coach, the recipient of those two PacWest Conference Coach of the Year awards in 2021 and 2022. And while he’s surely one of the most renowned coaches in the program’s history, he deflects all praise for himself and credits the program’s successes, including his own, to a supportive administration and athletic department, and to the players who he says changed the culture and mindset of the program.
“Back in our first few years, we constantly preached a change of culture and what it sounded and looked like, what it was going to take to get to the top,” he says. “I credit all of our success to the student athletes that have come through this program. It didn’t happen overnight and it took the players on the roster and recruits to believe in our program to make the changes needed to get us to where we are today.”
And here’s where they are today.
The successes of the regular 2022 season were history in the making. The women’s soccer team was unbeaten on the way to repeating as Pacific West Conference Champions and hosting a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division II West Regional. It was the first time in the history of the UH Hilo women’s soccer program that the Vulcans hosted the first and second round of the NCAA tournament. The Vulcans finished at 13-1-3 on Nov. 12, 2022, with an exit in the West Region Second Round, but the accomplishments to that point were exhilarating and made for an exciting season.
A career in his home town community
Okamura was born and raised in Hilo. Growing up, he played soccer for the Haʻaheo Soccer Club in Hilo and the Honolulu Bulls on Oʻahu. He attended Waiākea Elementary and transitioned to Waiākea High School where he played for the high school soccer team.
He graduated from Waiākea High School and began a degree at UH Hilo in 2006. Not only was Okamura a student, but he also was an athlete as he joined the men’s soccer program. An inaugural member of the team, he played from 2006 to 2010, with a waiver for injury in 2009. In 2010, he graduated from UH Hilo with a bachelor of arts in administration of justice.
Coach Okamura has always been heavily involved in the soccer community on Hawaiʻi Island. In 2012 he became the director of coaching for the Haʻaheo Soccer Club. Then he moved soccer clubs to Hawaiʻi Rush Soccer Big Island where he was director of coaching from 2014 to 2018.
Also during this time, he was the UH Hilo men’s and women’s soccer assistant coach from 2013 to 2016.
Kamehameha High School was also a large portion of his career in which he coached from 2014 to 2016, then 2021. He led the girls’ soccer team to a state runner-up title in 2016. Here, he also coached the boys’ soccer program in 2022 and led them to a state title.
In 2016, Okamura was named head coach of both the Vulcans men’s and women’s soccer programs before coaching only the women’s team starting in 2018.
UH Hilo women’s soccer
The women’s soccer program at UH Hilo had its beginnings in 2006 with a roster consisting of random students with soccer experience. The head coach and athletic director at the time roamed the campus asking college students to attend tryouts for the new program.
From there, the rest is history. Gene Okamura became head coach of the UH Hilo women’s soccer team after years of giving back to the community that raised him. In his first year as head coach, he led the team to second place in the PacWest Conference. Over the past four years, the team has made substantial achievements and come a long way.
“On the field, our goal was to win the conference and make it to the NCAA tournament,” he says. “Off the field, our goal was to make sure that our student athletes got immersed in our community and culture here and have a good student athlete experience.”
Overall, he says, the goals are meant “to create an environment and atmosphere where our student athletes can express themselves on and off the field while creating lifelong relationships [and] memories with their teammates, staff, and community members.”
A big component to those community relationships is community service.
“We try to be very involved in the community,” he explains. “We have done tons of community service over the years, especially in the midst of COVID when businesses were struggling, we tried our best to throw ourselves out there and support the community during a tough time.”
Okamura and the team have volunteered over hundreds of hours at different events and organizations. Some of these included corn harvesting for Hawaiʻi Food Bank and cooking meals for the residents at the Hawaiʻi Island Home for Recovery.
Along with his great coaching skills and support for all student-athletes, Coach Okamura shows unwavering dedication to staying involved with the community and all team members that have passed through the program under his mentorship. He’s a Hilo native, UH Hilo inaugural men’s soccer player, and an alumnus who has put the university’s women’s soccer program on the map.
Story by Maisie Paulson (B.A. in Psychology and B.A. in Administration of Justice, 2022).
