2026 Peace Corps Week: Volunteer Bill Sakovich trained Moroccan athletes, future leaders of international swimming
Bill Sakovich spent his Peace Corps days in the water, never realizing that the ten-year-old boys in the lanes would one day become the leaders of international swimming.
This story is by University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Professor of Political Science Su-Mi Lee as part of a series of stories to be published here at UH Hilo Stories this week celebrating 2026 Peace Corps Week, March 2-6, each day featuring a returned Peace Corps volunteer and new theme. Professor Lee’s research activity includes a years-long project documenting returned volunteers who have ties to UH Hilo and/or Hawaiʻi Island that includes written biographies as well as video and audio interviews.
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer: Bill Sakovich
Indonesia and Morocco: 1965-1967
Today’s Theme: The Journey Continues
For Bill Sakovich, Peace Corps service was never a chapter with a clear beginning and end; it was the start of a lifelong trajectory. Decades after his initial assignments in Indonesia and Morocco, he still coaches swimmers in Hilo, and the students he once taught are now the ones leading the way.
Bill’s journey started right here in Hilo, where he trained in the early 1960s for a Physical Education program in Indonesia. At the request of President Sukarno, Bill — a UCLA swimmer and water polo player — was tasked with developing athletes for the Olympics and Asian Games.
“Hilo felt like being overseas already,” Bill recalls. “The tropical rain, the friendly locals, and the intensive language training prepared us for a world away.” He remembers that the residents in Hilo were so supportive of Peace Corps trainees that they would often drive them across the island just to see the sights.
Once in Indonesia, Bill navigated the streets of Bandung on a Ducati motorcycle, coaching local swim clubs and teaching weight training. However, the 1965 coup forced an abrupt evacuation. When the Director asked if the volunteers wanted to go home or take a new assignment, Bill chose to keep going. Within a week, he was in Bangkok learning French, preparing to serve again — this time in Morocco.
Stationed at the Bellevue National Sports Center in Rabat, Bill became a fixture of Moroccan athletics. He lived in a bungalow on-site, training the National Team and traveling by local bus to conduct clinics in Fez, Meknes, and Casablanca. He was not just training athletes; he was teaching teachers how to coach. He spent his days in the water, never realizing that the ten-year-old boys in the lanes would one day become the leaders of international swimming.
Bill and his wife lived in Saipan for 31 years, where they established and ran the Saipan Swim Club. In 1991, while coaching the Saipan team at the World Championships in Perth, Australia, he recognized a familiar face: the Moroccan National Coach, who had been one of his top swimmers in Rabat decades earlier.
Even more stirring was an encounter in 2014 when he attended the World Short Course Championships in Doha, Qatar. While sitting in the bleachers, Bill heard a voice from behind him: “Bill Sakovich?” He stood up to find a man wearing a Moroccan official’s badge. It was one of his “young” swimmers from Meknes, now nearly 60 years old.
“We immediately hugged, and tears came to my eyes,” Bill says. “I couldn’t believe it. Forty-eight years later, at a major international competition, he remembered me.”
Through subsequent encounters with coaches and administrators in both Indonesia and Morocco, Bill has seen his former students become the hands that now guide the sport globally. He is amazed and pleased to see how many of them are still involved, either as coaches or administrators overseas.
Today, Bill has come full circle. After his decades in Saipan, he has returned to where it all began: Hilo, Hawaiʻi. He is still on the pool deck, still coaching, and still making a difference. Bill reflects on a life shaped by the Peace Corps. To him, the experience is not a distant memory but a living connection — a reminder that the friendships and values passed on over sixty years ago are still making a difference in lives around the world today.
Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Project
This week’s stories on returned Peace Corps volunteers is part of a larger project headed by Su-Mi Lee, a professor of political science, who along with her poli-sci students and members of the local community for years have been collecting biographical stories of returned volunteers who have ties to Hawaiʻi Island. Learn more about Prof. Lee’s Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Project (2023), and see more stories about it.
