It was the only life he had ever known, the only way he knew how to relate to his father.
Far from unique, there are many sons and daughters who grew up in an ohana encompassed by the atmospherics of athletics, with a father who coached. They were in high chairs watching dad with a whistle around his neck. As toddlers, they may have wandered into the den to watch dad going over tape or DVDs of games, and as little ones, they began to listen to his comments, began to accept why he kept watching over and over.
As they grew, they came to understand what a coach is, what that role is in the community, and many of the offspring of coaches eventually realized every kid they know thinks your dad was the coolest dad in the neighborhood — he’s the coach.
“I loved it,” said Ryley Callaghan, the former University of Hawaii at Hilo men’s basketball player and son of longtime state of Washington coach John Callaghan, who has been at South Kitsap High School continuously since 1997. “I embraced it all, I bought in early, you could say, but it wasn’t all just fun and games.
“There was a lot of pressure on me to perform,” he said, “because I was the coach’s son, it was like people had their eyes on me all the time, seeing if I was being favored or if I wasn’t doing there work that others did.
“But you know what? I completely embraced it. I got it. I loved every minute of it.”
That’s why Ryley Callaghan is going to grow into a good coach. He’s seen it, top to bottom, been there, done that. He played on powerful high school teams at South Kitsap, he played for a division winner at Peninsula College, and after he transferred to Hilo, he found out how the other half lives and why they lose so much.
Just now, after 21 years at South Kitsap, John Callaghan is thinking this will be his last year, though he struggled a bit mentioning he has a “good group this year and a really good group of juniors for next year.”
It’s a hard job to leave.
“It’s been such a blast,” he said, “but you know, time marches on. I’m not quite completely certain, but that’s the way I’m thinking, that this will be it.”
He’s proud that his son wants to coach, understands it wasn’t always easy, but reminds that it wasn’t always easy for the coach, either.
“The time I remember is when we were at the Gonzaga Basketball Camp — we go every year — and I had (Ryley) in the game. He was bringing the ball up the court and I called out some kind of play, can’t recall what it was, and (Ryley) said something in response, like he might have thought there was something else to call.
“That got me,” John Callaghan said. “I turned to the bench and yelled at someone, ‘Get in there for him, this ain’t no effin’ debate,’ and out of the side of my eye I could see the whole bench — everyone of them — looking at me and then quickly turning their heads like they weren’t paying attention.
“After that,” he said, “it was just basketball again. Great fun coaching him, I can say that for sure, he’s a good kid.”
Ryley Callaghan is starting out at the bottom, as a graduate assistant for Corban College — formerly Western Baptist — a small, private religious school in Salem, Oregon, that just three months ago named Mitch Freeman, Callaghan’s former coach at Peninsula College, its new head coach. One of the first calls Freeman made was to Callaghan, knowing he had an interest in coaching.
“We have a limited amount of money we can pay for an assistant but we had a good grad assistant program we were able to make work for him,” Freeman said. “I know him well, he was my point guard for two years, two of our best. I thought of Ryley right away and couldn’t happier that we have him.”
Sometimes things just fall into place, seemingly of their own accord. Callaghan had been thinking about some professional opportunities overseas, but the money didn’t match up to the needs of a guy needing a teaching certificate and a masters degree.
“This is a perfect opportunity,” Ryley Callaghan said. “I got my kinesiology degree at Hilo, but they didn’t have a program to get me a teaching certificate, so by being a grad assistant, I can take those classes for free, get my certificate and work on my masters.
“A few months ago all I had was questions, but now I have a road map,” he said. “This is going to be awesome.”
Callaghan was put in charge of recruiting by Freeman, something he has never done, but then he’s never been in charges of weights and conditioning, either, another part of the job he was offered.
When he was younger, Callaghan treasured those moments when he got to go into the locker before and after his dad’s high school games. As Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just from watching,” and in Callaghan’s case, that applied to listening.
“Oh, those times were the best,” he said. “I’m sure there are times I didn’t get it, but there were many more times I heard the lessons, I understood what was being talked about and I’d try to learn those lessons myself if that sounds right. I learned a lot from my dad, just from listening.”
He also learned a lot in two miserable years at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, where the team went 17-36 and that wasn’t the worst of it.
“It wasn’t good off the court,” Callaghan said. “A lot of off-the-court issues there, things I have never seen before, so many egos involved, and not enough guys who wanted to buy into the team concept. It never seemed to get resolved.”
Players whined about playing time, criticized each other, thought they needed to be more involved and it all had the effect of splitting apart the potential.
Darius Johnson-Wilson had a fifth year of eligibility, but had seen enough and opted to end his career rather than return. Brian Ishola, arguably, the team’s best player, also hung it up after one year with the Vulcans.
The University of Hawaii at Hilo would not allow men’s basketball coach GE Coleman to comment on any aspect of Callaghan’s career, his coaching future or the personality issues that players say separated the team.
But his teammates knew about Callaghan.
“It’s no surprise to me that he is pursuing the coaching career,” said Johnson-Wilson. “Knowing Ryley off and on the court, he showed great knowledge of the game, just by picking teams apart offensively, coming back to the huddle to make adjustments to what he is seeing on the floor, speaking with teammates on where he can best get them the ball.
“He’s always proven his high IQ and was able to play college ball,” Johnson-Wilson said. “He isn’t the quickest, fastest, high jumping machine, but he was witty, feisty, relentless, overall just creative on the floor. I’m glad to see he is quickly moving into coaching, I knew it was coming one day.”
Hilo was the only place Callaghan has played that produced a losing team and he said last week in an interview, he wished he could forget much of what happened here. It was mentioned to him that egos and off court issues run through all programs at times, and that was something he had never seen before UHH.
“I agree,” he said. “Hilo is just a very tough place to play, for a lot of reasons, you have guys who seem homesick, others think they are the man and need the ball a lot, little cliques among the players, it takes a lot to get through all of it.
“But now,” he said, “I have a feel for the problems that can come up, I’ll know how to deal with them better after having been to Hilo, and I’m sure they will come up.
“That’s because,” he said, “I plan to coach forever.”
Forever starts next month at a small private school in Oregon.
The future is wide open.
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