Chargers Fondly Remember Baseball Coach Mel Seki

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During his 15-year run as Pearl City’s baseball coach, Mel Seki always kept the bigger picture in mind.

“At times, we had kids who were having problems with grades,” said current head baseball coach Gary Nakamoto, a former assistant to Seki. “He’d tutor them on his own time.”

Seki was perhaps uniquely qualified to help his players stay the course academically, having been a longtime teacher at Pearl City Highlands Intermediate in addition to an 18-year run as principal at the school. Even so, his name remains invariably tied to his baseball tenure at Pearl City, where he won Oahu Interscholastic Association titles in 1993 and 2007 and established himself as the school’s all-time winningest coach with a record of 151-70-3. Seki passed away recently from an illness. He was 73. “We’ve lost a good man,”

Nakamoto said. “I’m glad he’s in a good place. Best wishes to his wife, Laura.”

Nakamoto was among those who got to see Seki at work in both environments - as educator and coach.

“He was my teacher in the sixth grade at Highlands Intermediate,” Nakamoto mused. “He was kind of strict, education-wise.”

By the time Nakamoto met up with his former teacher, who was 12 years his elder, they were both coaching Little League in Pearl City in the 1980s. After leading Waipahu’s junior varsity team to the Oahu Interscholastic Association title in 1992, Seki was tapped as Pearl City’s new varsity coach. One of his first calls was to Nakamoto, who began a successful run as the Chargers’ head JV coach before being hired as Seki’s successor following the 2007 campaign.

While “strict” in a classroom setting, Nakamoto considered Seki something of a players’ coach on the baseball field.

“He was real easy going with the kids,” Nakamoto said,“and he liked to teach. He was very knowledgeable as far as the fundamentals and teaching kids the proper way to play the game. He had been a good shortstop in his own playing days.”

Seki had starred at Saint Louis School, which he graduated from in 1953. His experience there under coach Francis Funai was to influence his own coaching, according to Nakamoto.

“Funai was his mentor,” Nakamoto said of Seki, who also served as vice principal at Leilehua for a time. “He followed his teachings and his ways.”

Seki went on to earn bachelor’s degrees from both Pennsylvania and the University of Hawaii.

At Pearl City, Seki also won three OIA West regular-season titles and took the Chargers to the state tournament 10 times.

He also led Pearl City to the state championship game in 1993 and 2007, the latter, a 7-1 loss to Punahou, being the last game he ever coached.

Pearl City had won nine straight games, the longest streak of Seki’s tenure, prior to that game.

Seki’s son, Steve, is the head baseball coach at Saddleback Junior College in California.

Mel Seki’s last interview with MidWeek came in December of 2007 when he reflected on the Chargers’ riveting post-season run of the previous spring, which was considered the top sports story of the year in the West region.

“I really believe in momentum,” he said at the time. “I used to tell the kids, ‘ride the big wave,’ and I think we did that.”