DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM
Sayuri Kusutani considers herself a marathon runner, but has won two races to help Hawaii Pacific become the top cross-country school in Hawaii.
Coming of age THOSE who said that Sayuri Kusutani was too old to achieve her goals should see her now.
HPU's Sayuri Kusutani is faster
than runners half her ageBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comGranted, the 43-year-old sophomore at Hawaii Pacific abandoned all hopes of glory in tennis and marathon running because of her age, but it hasn't stopped her from becoming one of Hawaii's premier cross-country runners.
Kusutani won her first two collegiate cross-country races this year when she won the Hawaii-Hilo and Brigham Young-Hawaii invitationals. Although they came when her teammate and Sea Warriors' anchor Nina Christensen was sick, she will take them. The unmarried Kusutani is the classic case of always being the bride's maid, but never the bride.
"Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I had started earlier," Kusutani said. "Maybe I could have won a marathon or went to the Olympics."
Kusutani's athletic career began in her native Japan, where she was a nationally ranked tennis player but seemed to always finish second in her coveted prefecture championship, a title that would have brought with it an invitation to the All-Japan team she had been chasing since starting the game.
After she had pursued that goal for so many years, an independent running coach, Toshiyuki Chindo, saw her thin frame and told the then 38-year-old that she was too old to win at tennis, but she should give marathon running a try. She tried juggling the two before giving in to Chindo's belief that her real future lay in running.
After less than three years of working with Chindo, Kusutani decided to fly to Berlin to try her training against one of the world's most famous marathon courses.
And that is where the defining moment of her young career came. Kusutani finished 16th and promptly gave up the sport for good, when she heard the same refrain she heard at the end of her tennis career -- that she was too old.
So she gave up running, figuring that since she met her goal, there was nothing more to accomplish.
Her time of 2:40:05 left her satisfied enough that she quit to chase a dream that she had held close to her heart since she was a schoolgirl. Kusutani, the owner of an English school, wanted to study abroad. So she did.
"Studying abroad was always my dream," Kusutani said. "But my parents were so strict and would never let me go anywhere. After Berlin I got my father's permission and decided to quit my job and think again about my career."
KUSUTANI'S FATHER allowed her to come to Hawaii to enroll in English school. Her experience abroad was only supposed to last three months, but she entered the 2000 Great Aloha Run just for the rush of testing herself against other runners again. When she came out of nowhere to win the event, it sent the small world of local competitive running scrambling to find out who she was and where she came from.
One of those runners sent scrambling was Hawaii Pacific coach Vien Schwinn, who knew nothing about Kusutani except that she had beaten Christensen. So with the help of mutual friend Tesh Teshima, Schwinn offered Kusutani a scholarship and gave the 42-year-old a chance to return to school.
"It was just a golden opportunity and something I never thought about," Kusutani said. "My coach (Chindo) told me the speed workout will help my marathon, but he said I can't beat younger people."
That was when Kusutani accepted Schwinn's offer and started to make a habit of beating younger people.
After training with Schwinn and her coaching staff for the past year and a half, Kusutani wants to run another marathon, this time with the benchmark of 2 1/2 hours as her goal. She runs 17 miles of the Honolulu Marathon course every Sunday because it leaves the door open for another run after the season is over.
ALTHOUGH SHE dislikes the short bursts required of cross country compared to the long test that a marathon provides, one thing keeps Kusutani competing with athletes who are half her age -- winning.
"I don't like running, it is very tough and hard work," Kusutani said. "But when I start, I just want to win."
She had been deprived of the opportunity to win in her freshman year because Christensen is strong enough to rob her of those opportunities, but she has learned something that she had never known in all of her years of singular pursuits -- that a team win feels just as good.
At first Kusutani bristled at the idea of running for a team. But after helping her teammates achieve personal-best times by slowing herself down, Kusutani found running nirvana.
"Now I am completely focused on cross country," Kusutani said. "I am higher motivated than last year because we have two great coaches and I feel like the team needs me."
Her first win, on a muddy and confusing track at Hilo, came as a result of being a team player. She was leading the race but took a wrong turn and still managed to pass the field and take first place.
"I almost gave up the race because I though I could not catch up," Kusutani said. "But before I gave up I thought I should try to pass one or two runners so I could help my team win."
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