Yang says goodbye to coaching

After many years of dedication to Clinton High School athletics, longtime swim team coach Ken Yang is stepping away from that role. While he’s no longer a coach, he said the impact he made on the students he reached will forever remain his greatest reward.

Yang celebrated the end of his career with his fellow Dark Horse during their end of year athletic banquet, earlier this year where he was honored as the recipient of the Volunteer Service Award.

“He was more than well-deserving of the award and he’s a big part of why our soccer teams have been so successful,” said CHS Athletic Director Brad Spell. “He reached our kids at a young age and kept them together, and he’s been a blessing teaching our guys fundamentals. He’s one in million and Clinton High athletics has been blessed to have him.”

Yang, himself , was happy to have been recognized but said it was the opportunity to be involved with the youth that made it all matter.

“It’s a wonderful award; I’m really flattered by it, and I’m flattered the school system thought of me,” Yang said about receiving the award. “It is great but there’s just so many single moms out there that are getting a kid to school, they’re getting them to practice, and they have no help … to me, that’s exceptional.

“At times they are single parents that are also poor and yet they never stopped trying to bring them to me throughout my career so that they could get a chance to be involved in swimming. It’s those that are always trying to give their kids a better chance that should be awarded. I’m glad I was just part of the opportunity to give them an opportunity.”

Yang spent well over a decade volunteering his time in many different aspects as a coach as his initial life’s goal was to be a teacher and swim coach. His professional life, however, went in a different direction — medicine — which he attributes, at least in part, to his loving wife Grace Ho Yang, owner of Ho Yang Fine Art.

On that path, here in small town Sampson County, and with his own children, Yang took the dive back into coaching, a journey that led him to teach students from the earliest ages possible in hopes of guiding them in learning the importance of achieving success with your peers.

“At the time, I wanted to be a high school or middle school English teacher and then coach swimming, that was my initial plan for my career,” he said. “Not my wife’s, however, and fortunately for me, because of her, my grades improved and I went to medical school. Even so, I always enjoyed coaching, and medicine has given me the opportunity to do both, which I still teach, and I taught medical students and resident doctors for my entire career.

“But also, being in a small community, I came to realize that small communities depend upon parents participation for everything. Whether it be the theater, sports, music, the success of most students over their time in a small town is based on that parental organization for their extracurricular activities. Having played team sports, I knew that if I wanted to teach my children how to be good at something, I wanted them to know what it meant to be a part of something where all the players are successful.

“Your team is only as good as your least talented athletes, so when I started coaching them at a young age, I knew that a team is more than just individuals shining. So I tried to carry as many kids who wanted to learn from me as possible, so that when they got to high school, the entire team would have a chance at success.”

That was Yang’s original philosophy as a coach, one he carried throughout his career. In the end, he said teaching those lessons to his own children led him to stay with it all these years.

“Ultimately, it’s easier for your child to enjoy team sports if they have friends doing it together so that’s the whole reason I continued to coach and coach multiple teams and multiple kids,” he said. “For most people, their childhood peers joining in their endeavors helps those peers to become their friends. So there were multiple benefits from coaching many kids over time; not only would it help the school system and help other kids, but, ultimately, it would help my own children have a team that was competitive once they got to high school. And so, that’s really what motivated me to keep doing it.

“I did it to for my children, first and foremost, but recognizing that teams are a group of people I could reach, I could also give that time to (others), too. If I would spend that time with my kids anyway, I might as well spend that time with anybody else who wanted to go along.”

As part of that time, Yang also coached soccer. And he was instrumental in bringing swimming to Sampson County students, starting the program in 2006. His reasons for the initiative — nothing more than wanting to give the county’s children an opportunity to swim.

“Back then the hospital was trying to build the Wellness Center, which is now the YMCA, and I went before the board and I said, ‘if you build a swimming pool, I will coach for free,”’ Yang said. “I also asked that the swim team be allowed to use the pool. My only request was that it they couldn’t afford to pay that we give them a scholarship to the swim program. I always wanted no child to ever be turned away from the swim program while I was coach.

“I don’t know if that was impactful in deciding to make the pool but they built a pool and I started coaching for free.”

He finished his coaching career in the swimming program, where, he said, some of his fondest memories were made.

“The most fond moment was from two girls, Miriam and Kerren Sanchez, that I taught how to swim,” he said. “I feel like if they didn’t learn how to swim with me, the chances of them learning how to swim well would have been slim to none in Samson County. They went on a family vacation in Mexico and they were, I think, 11 years old and 13 years old. So they’re out there in Mexico and there’s no lifeguards and one of their family members starts to drown, an adult. Those two went out there and rescued that person.

“That my coaching would indirectly lead to the saving of a life, that is the most rewarding story of my coaching that I will ever have.”

In all that Yang has accomplished in his long tenure as a coach, from rec soccer to high school swimming, he attested that it’s all been fun. True as those words may be , he said none of it would have been possible without the support of his wife, whose name was right alongside his on the Volunteer Service Award even though it wasn’t visibly there.

“It’s been a fun ride, but really this is a tribute to my wife,” Yang stressed. “Grace has always said that if you do something with universal design, universal design meaning that it’s good for everybody, then you’re not just helping your own child, you’re making it possible for everybody else. So my wife, she supported me through all this, and if it weren’t for her, I couldn’t coach. The only way you can coach is if somebody else is doing all the hard stuff, which is the discipline, the house chores, education for the kids. Sports is glory, sure, but without her, what I do is impossible. I would never be able to do that without my wife, but her comment of universal design always stuck with me that what we do for one of our children, if we make it open for everybody else, then you give other kids opportunities.

“Although I got the award, I really considered it an award for both my wife and I. Her name’s not on it because she wasn’t the forward face of the sport, she was the behind the scenes face, doing all the stuff that allowed me to coach. So, in reality, the award should say Ken Yang and Grace Ho.

After dedicating so much of his life to coaching, it was the graduation on his youngest daughter, Kenzy, from CHS that finally made him hang it up.

There are, he said, other paths to walk.

“My full intention was to do this (coach) until my youngest graduated high school and carry as many kids as I could,” he said. “That time has come and I just want to say what means a lot to me through all this is that my parents and Grace’s parents came from extreme poverty. They found a way to immigrate to this country and give me and Grace a better chance, and because I had the opportunity to have a job that, one gave me flexibility, but also enough income that I could afford to not work in the afternoon so I could coach. It’s for those reasons that I’ll forever be grateful for this opportunity.

“As for future plans, I’ll practice more medicine, spend more time with my wife and try to build up our art gallery. If grandkids pop out then maybe I’ll go back to coaching, but right now, I’m retired from coaching.”