Wyatt Tau Returns To Campbell As Head Basketball Coach

Del.icio.us

The days when Wyatt Tau played center as a 6-footer at Campbell remain vivid in his mind. Indeed, when the first-year Sabers coach recently assembled his summer league team he couldn’t help but notice the difference between then and now in the Ewa basketball community, especially with seven players stretching over 6 feet.

“When you look at the community now, it’s getting bigger and bigger and so are we,” Tau said. “We didn’t always have the tall kids here, and at Aiea we rarely had 6-footers; we’d have a 5-10 or 6-foot kid. But we have good size here now, and all the kids over 6 feet are talented. They’re big men that can play guard. You almost want to slow it up a little bit, but these guys can dribble, too.”

Tau was recently tapped as Campbell’s new head basketball coach after three highly successful seasons at Aiea in which he led Na Ali’i to a pair of OIA Division II titles as well as an appearance in the Division II State Tournament in 2008.

“It was hard to leave Aiea,” admitted Tau. “Aiea has a great athletic department, and Blake (Moritsugu) is a real good athletic director to work for.”

Tau was already the Sabers’ head track and field coach as well as an assistant on Amosa Amosa’s football staff, so returning to coach basketball at Campbell, where he was an assistant to Gary Ortiz earlier in the decade, was hardly a surprise to those in the community.

“It’s a lot easier for me,” he said. “My son goes to Pohakea Elementary, and I’m an educational assistant at Campbell so I’m able to walk him to school in the morning. After school, he can come to Campbell to be with me.”

Tau succeeds Zaricke Jackson, whose contract wasn’t renewed. Campbell finished 12-6 under Jackson last year and made the state tournament for the fifth time in six years.

The only thing missing from the program has been stability in the coaching ranks. Tau is the school’s fifth boys basketball coach in six years.

“It’s been nothing but change here as far as basketball,” he said. “I’ve kept up with the program even though I was at Aiea. I still used to come to a lot of the games.”

For his part, he’s keeping it simple this summer. “We’re not full force on anything yet - we’re teaching fundamentals and base plays,” said Tau, whose team has been practicing three days a week. “Once they understand our system, I think we’ll be fine. We’re giving them some basic stuff. Defensively, we’re just teaching man-to-man. We want them to get used to it.”

Tau will have a relatively young team in 2009-10 with Mason Mau and Christian Manuel the only seniors that have been in the fold this summer.

“A lot of JV kids will be moving up, so they’re still used to getting used to the tempo of the (varsity-level) game, but we’re seeing a lot of good things.”

Campbell returns to summer league action at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Kaiser High stadium when the team plays Damien.