He Started For Fitness
By Jack Danilewicz
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When Hawaii Baptist Academy runner Matthew Nakamoto completed his first top-five finish in an Interscholastic League of Honolulu race, he still had enough spring in his step to seek out his coach, Derek Coryell. In fact, he couldn’t find him fast enough.
“I’d been doing good in practice, and Coach told me he thought I could finish in the top five,” Nakamoto recalled of that September 2006 day when he was a sophomore. “After I finished fourth,I had to thank him for believing in me. That was a big turning point for me. I really didn’t know how hard I’d been working up until that race. After that race, I started working even harder.”
Nakamoto, who lives in Hawaii Kai, has seen his dedication begin to pay off in a big way. On Oct. 27, his 16th birthday, he edged Punahou’s Chris Burniske in a photo-finish at Central Oahu Regional Park to win the ILH individual title. His time of 16:50.70 was a mere 26-hundredths of a second better than Burniske (16:50.96),with whom he had traded the lead several times on the 3-mile course.
He was on Maui last Friday to compete in the Honolulu Marathon Cross Country Championships, where he was expected to be among the favorites. This week he begins training for the Dec. 1 Foot Locker National Championships in California.
If Nakamoto seems like a lifelong runner, it’s because he performs like one. But there was no direct line to cross country for him. With baseball firmly entrenched as his favorite sport while growing up, he was merely looking to upgrade his conditioning when he went out for cross country as an eighth-grader.
“I did it for the workouts,” said Nakamoto, now a junior. “I needed to be in good shape for baseball. That first year that I ran, I thought it was really hard. As the year went by, I got better at it, and suddenly I was good.”
A second baseman, he stopped playing baseball after his freshman year.“I totally forgot about baseball,” said Nakamoto, who is the son of Barry and Shawn Nakamoto. Now he runs six days a week, covering approximately 40 miles in the process. He works from a schedule provided by Coryell and head coach Ross Mukai.
“They’ve really helped me a lot,” he said. “I wouldn’t be where I am without them.”
Nakamoto, who finished fourth in the ILH and 11th in the state last year, is not without his pre-race rituals. He eats a spaghetti dinner the night before every race and wears the same white Quiksilver shorts when running.
With his improvement steady, a college scholarship may well be in reach for Nakamoto, who is thinking about pursuing a career as an athletic trainer.
“I hope I can (continue),“he said. “I really want to run in college.”
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