Kainoa Correa keeps blazing new trails for the family business of coaching baseball while setting a roadmap for those who want to make the game their life’s profession. ADVERTISING Kainoa Correa keeps blazing new trails for the family business of
Kainoa Correa keeps blazing new trails for the family business of coaching baseball while setting a roadmap for those who want to make the game their life’s profession.
The Northern Colorado assistant and 2006 Waiakea graduate was recently named head coach for the 17U Northwest region USA National Team Identification Series squad.
Correa will lead the team in the NTIS event from Aug. 25-28 in Cary, N.C., and will help select prospects to participate at the national level.
“It is an awesome honor because it’s a role with USA Baseball,” he said. “I have been coaching and recruiting at the NCAA level for seven seasons and in that time I have been fortunate to work side by side with some exceptional coaches who have also had roles with USA Baseball. Fortunately for me, some of my peers suggested me to USA Baseball.”
Before that, he’ll host a clinic at UH-Hilo’s baseball field along with coach Kaha Wong’s Big Island Baseball organization Aug. 3-4.
“Defense has propelled my career because there are so many coaches out there who are hitting and pitching coaches and very little who have marketed themselves as defensive specialists,” Correa said. “I love coaching defense because it fits perfectly with my obsession with attention to detail and also because the success rate in defensive statistics is much higher than offensive statistics.
“In my six years of coaching our defenses at Puget Sound (2014) and UNC (2016), both have broken the school records for fielding percentage. This has allowed me to be the primary guest infield speaker at Washington, Kansas, Stanford and many other camps.”
Baseball is no longer an Olympic sport, but USA Baseball competes in international tournaments all around the world.
The most prestigious event is the World Baseball Classic. The next one is scheduled for 2017. In three tournaments, the highest finish for Team USA, filled with major leaguers, was fourth in 2009.
Correa received a huge endorsement from USA Baseball’s Jim Sammons, who talked with a lot of exclamation points in a press release.
“We’re very excited to bring Kai Correa on to help us with our coaching staff for the Northwest Region of the National Team Identification Series with USA Baseball,” Sammons said. “He helped us at our local event in Seattle in early June, and it was apparent that his energy and work ethic brought the most out of the players immediately! We couldn’t be more excited to bring him on board with Northwest Region! The players selected are in for a real treat getting to work with Kai.”
Correa comes from a family line of coaches.
His late grandpa Coach Jimmy Correa was a volunteer coach for St. Joseph’s High School baseball team for 31 years from 1955 to 1986.
His dad Tom Correa was Waiakea’s coach and his uncle Andy Correa guided Kamehameha to the HHSAA Division II state championship in May.
@ThatGuy_Kai — his Twitter handle — is the first former BIIF ballplayer to coach at the NCAA Division I level. He’s in his third season with the Bears. (Sky Valenzuela, a 2016 Kealakehe grad, is a volunteer assistant at Abilene Christian.)
Good fortune
After a seven-year career at Puget Sound (four as a player, three as an assistant), Correa left Tacoma, Wash., for UNC, where he spent 2014 as a Bear volunteer assistant.
“It’s been an amazing journey so far, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had the opportunities I’ve had to move forward in this profession,” Correa said. “Back in 2011, I was fortunate that coach Brian Billings (now at Pacific University) gave me the chance to go from infielder to third base coach and recruiting coordinator overnight.
“I was lucky enough to build strong relationships with coach Lindsay Meggs at Washington, coach Ritch Price at Kansas, and coach Dave Nakama at San Jose State (recently fired) and many other small-college head coaches. They were instrumental in suggesting me to Northern Colorado head coach Carl Iwasaki when he had a staff opening in 2014.”
It seems that Correa was surrounded by good fortune.
In 2012, Puget Sound made his Loggers assistant coaching position full-time. Correa estimated that less than 5 percent of Division III assistants are full-time.
Good fortune struck again in 2015 when he was promoted to full-time assistant at UNC.
Correa pointed out every Division I program is allowed only two full-time assistants and one volunteer assistant. There are 580 full-time Division I assistants and approximately 290 volunteers, who make their income by running summer camps.
“Those jobs are nearly impossible for a young coach without Division I experience or professional playing experience, let alone an ex-Division III player,” Correa said.
His dad’s favorite quote applies: “You have to be lucky enough to catch the breaks and good enough to take advantage of them.”
Love every moment
While Correa has mentioned how lucky he’s been, the son of Tom and Wendy is far too understated to note that he owes his success solely to hard work.
At least, the Bear assistant will talk about hard work, and it sure sounds he really loves the game, logging the type of hours for working stiffs who have two or three jobs.
“The grind is what separates the guys who coach forever from the guys who move on to conventional jobs. As a college coach, in addition to coaching and recruiting, you spend hours, academically advising, providing life advice, taking care of the field, organizing camps, doing paperwork, and fundraising,” he said. “Days and weeks can be long, and you often don’t even want to think about what your pay is if you calculated it hourly.
“Coach Chad Konishi gave me incredible advice in my first year coaching. He said that coach Les Murakami told him that if you were in it to get rich or famous you would never make it, but if you were in it because you loved the game and the job you would be just fine. I think about that whenever I’m constantly on the road or whenever student loan companies call me.
“In all seriousness, I love every moment of my job, and I am lucky that I have a family and a girlfriend who have supported me along the journey.”
Like St. Louis second baseman Kolten Wong, who has made hard work his chief characteristic, Correa is the same way, as far as paving a different career path for his fellow Big Island homegrown products.
“I’d like to think all of us from the Big Island who are or have been in college or in the pros are role models to the BIIF sports community,” Correa said. “Big Island kids are so fortunate that they are a part of a community with such a rich sports history. For me specifically, I’ve followed guys like Kolten’s lead, and I take my role as a role model very seriously. I take every opportunity I can to get home and educate kids and parents about what it takes to make it at any level of post high school baseball. How can you not give back to the community that gave you so much?
“My highlight is every day when I get in my car in the morning knowing my job is baseball, and that’s still hard to believe.”
Kainoa Correa can celebrate his good fortune because today he turns 28 years old.
For more information about Correa’s camp, call Big Island Baseball’s Kaha Wong at 895-4595.
