This Bud’s for You

Head coach Michele “Bud” Nagamine and the University of Hawai‘i women’s soccer team excelled this season thanks in part to a well-prepared staff. Pictured are (left to right) Num Tindle, assistant coach; Noe Kong-Johnson, assistant coach; Nagamine; Kaula Rowe, associate head coach; and Daniel Saucedo, assistant coach. Photo by Lawrence Tabudlo

The toast of the town these days is University of Hawai‘i skipper Michele “Bud” Nagamine and her record-breaking, forever-resilient women’s soccer team.

It’s been a thrilling 2024 season for the University of Hawai‘i women’s soccer team, which made history as Big West regular season champions while also setting a school record for conference victories and a program-record nine-game unbeaten streak.

“Watching the celebration and just the sheer thrill of victory when we beat Santa Barbara (on Oct. 27) and we clinched the Big West regular season title, that was probably my favorite moment (of the season) because this team has been beyond special,” says head coach Michele “Bud” Nagamine. “Special doesn’t even cut it for this group. They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do and then some, and they continuously surprise me throughout the entire season with the way that they care about each other, the way that they show up for each other and how hard they worked.

“Not to diminish any of my other seasons at UH, but I think when you get that combination of the right staff, the right team, the right timing and just the results behind everything that we did, it was a very historic season for us and one that I will remember forever.”

As fans watched the Rainbow Wāhine score one goal after another, set record after record and dominate Big West post-season honors — including Coach of the Year (Nagamine), Goalkeeper of the Year (Kennedy Justin), Midfielder of the Year (Nalani Damacion) and Defensive Player of the Year (Jacey Jicha) — what they didn’t see were the many obstacles the team overcame outside the stadium.

As Nagamine describes it, the season was not only “incredible” but also “unbelievable.”

“We’ve had so many challenges: We don’t even have a field on campus,” she explains. “There’s been so much adversity to deal with on the front end and a lot to ask of the players. As we patiently await our (new) facility on campus, it did cause us to have a lot of moving pieces operationally at the beginning of the season.

“We just looked at this year as, hey, let’s try to be creative. Let’s try to think outside the box. Let’s rely on and network with our neighbors and see if there’s a way we can actually find a grass practice field to train on. We can’t go off campus every single day, but what we’ve done is we’ve used a combination of facilities. We’ve practiced on the softball outfield. We’ve practiced on T.C. Ching, on portions of their field. We’ve also gone up to Mid-Pac and, soccer has a lot of equipment. We’re carrying portable goals, cones, three bags of balls. There’s a lot of equipment and we did that every single day.”

As part of the improvement project that transformed the T.C. Ching Athletics Complex into the UH football team home field, the UH women’s track and soccer teams were temporarily displaced to allow the school to build a new complex that will host track meets and UH women’s soccer matches. For now, the teams are playing at Waipi‘o Peninsula Soccer Stadium.
“At the beginning of the season, we didn’t really think about the fact that all these visiting teams were going to need places to play and practice for the games,” Nagamine recalls. “We ended up having to work with our medical staff and our trainers to make sure that we could drop water, recovery and injury ice, the soccer goals to various locations around the island that could accommodate our mainland teams and our team for practice. We’re not complaining because we know the end result is going to be a beautiful facility, but just getting through this year, my staff and I were like, ʻHow are we going to do this?’”
According to Nagamine, patience, resilience and a can-do mentality buoyed them through the season, with every player and coach stepping up with support from coaches of other UH sports teams.
Since joining UH and skippering the women’s soccer program in 2011, Nagamine has a growing list of highlights, including being one of five active Big West coaches to earn Conference Coach of the Year honors multiple times, reaching her 100-career win as a collegiate head coach at the Sept. 1 victory over North Dakota State University, and leading UH to its first-ever Big West Conference tournament bid in 2019.

Prior to UH, she was the women’s soccer head coach at Hawai‘i Pacific University, where she was known for turning a losing program into a conference contender. She also served as head coach for Kamehameha Schools’ girls soccer team from 1991 to 2007, winning five state championships and six Interscholastic League of Honolulu titles.

“I’m very much a player’s coach, everything I do is with them in mind,” says Nagamine. “My players are the central focus of everything that I do. How we run the program, I always try to have them in mind … what kind of experiences can I provide for them that are going to be memorable and last a lifetime?

“When you come so far away for school and you’re moving thousands of miles away from your family, we want to make sure that these student-athletes have an experience that they’re going to remember for the right reasons for the rest of their lives. I think my philosophy is very much player-centric and it’s very holistic.

“People think you cannot develop players at the collegiate level. They think you come out of the best clubs, you’re already a good player, you get to college and you just make that transition. But it’s a huge, steep, learning curve and it’s part of what I enjoy. One of the most rewarding things for me is to be able to watch a player matriculate through the program and watch their growth that occurs both on and off the field as women and as soccer players.”

A 1986 graduate of Kamehameha Schools, Nagamine’s journey into soccer started when she was around 11 years old. She credits all of her coaches for having a lasting influence on how she approaches the game and runs her programs.

She says her first AYSO coach, Ron Mata, helped her to figure out if she actually liked the game, and her women’s league club coach, Ramon Argent, an ex-gunnery sergeant in the Marines for instilling a lot of discipline in her.

“Then, my first female role model for soccer was (my high school varsity coach) Renee Martin,” she notes. “I just watched her, and she showed me that you could really have it all. She was a young wife, finishing graduate school, getting A’s in college … It was really a cool time to be able to watch a young woman lead our team and then getting her education finished up. She instilled a lot of the love of the game for me.

“And lastly, would be my coach in college, Jerry Smith. He was a very young coach coming out of Foothill Junior College and I got a chance to really witness how a program was built at Santa Clara. When I got there, we weren’t even in the rankings and when I left, we were in the Final Four.”

At Santa Clara University, Nagamine earned a bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis on TV production, and had thoughts of becoming an MTV VJ. However, after interning at a news station in San Jose, she realized she didn’t enjoy being in front of the camera.

Eventually, she moved back home and discovered a need in the soccer community for a store that catered to women and opened Soccerama in 1992 with business partner Laurie Baker. She also owned her own marketing group and worked as a rep for various brands, including Vans. Later on, she became the director of sports marketing and sales for Outrigger & Ohana Hotels and Resorts.

“Now I’m in my dream job that I didn’t know was my dream job because the one thing that was missing was just working with student-athletes,” says Nagamine. “It’s been such a blessing and such a rewarding experience. It has not been easy. Everybody knows the challenges that we have living on an island with budgets that are not quite where we need them to be, but we do the best that we can and we’re grateful for what we get and what we do receive and we’re especially grateful for the support from our community.”

Now that the season has ended, Nagamine is looking forward to cleaning her office and house, and spending more time with her parents and her 98-year-old grandma.

“I want to go to Vegas,” she adds. “And I’m a fanatic about the holidays. I decorate my house. I decorate the yard. I really get into the holidays. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s my favorite time of the year.”

As for her advice to young athletes who aspire to play in college one day, she tells them to advocate for themselves.

“If you feel that you need help, ask for it. And, the actions have to match the dream. So if you’re saying, ‘I want to play soccer in college,’ but then you’re one of those kids who complain about going to practice, check that. It’s your journey, and your actions have to match your dreams.”