I had the privilege of going to Kalani Sitake’s fireside this evening for the Timpview High School seminary program. His daughter asked him to come and speak, and his whole family was there in attendance. His daughter sang a musical number with a Polynesian student that clearly looked like a football player but I couldn’t place him. Kalani said afterwards he was heading to Utah State.

His talk was about a variety of topics but centered on showing love and kindness to others and on trusting in the Lord to take care of your future.

He said their recent football team motto has been “Love and Learn” and compared fear and love as motivators. He sounded a tiny bit Bronco-esque when he said “believe it or not, winning is NOT everything” and that he wants his team to be happy and fulfilled in all aspects of life and to find joy in excelling at their craft and in the brotherhood of the team.

He told about the coaching convention he just went to where many approached him and called him “the dancing coach” which gave him the opportunity to tell many about his philosophy of having fun while working hard to win games.

My favorite part of the fireside was when Kalani gave a brief account of his recruiting experience with BYU, including some details that I hadn’t heard before. For anyone who doesn’t know, he lived in Provo to start high school and was planning to go out for three sports at Timpview and was trying to catch BYU‘s eye as a freshman in high school. At that time his single father (his mother was not a part of his life at that time) decided to move the family to St. Louis which was not in the plan. He became a football star at a high school out there and the college offers started coming in. He committed to Hayden Fry at Iowa. BYU was extremely late in the game in recruiting him, basically no contact, which gave him quite an attitude towards BYU. He did grudgingly save one of his official visits in case BYU called. Then, three weeks before signing day, Lavell Edwards came to his home in Missouri to offer him a scholarship and apologize for the poor communication. He said Lavell said “coaches can make mistakes, and we definitely made one here”. Even so, Kalani was getting up a head of steam to let Lavell have it and to pridefully tell him off (“that ship has sailed” etc) when he looked over and his father was crying and told Coach Edwards what a great blessing it was to receive a scholarship offer and that of course Kalani would accept.

He told some other stories from his interactions with his wife and children that I thought were awesome.

Some newsworthy items from Kalani’s talk (I don’t know if any of these are actually breaking news though):

- Kalani talked about being pursued for head coaching positions throughout the Pac12 and elsewhere. His two teenage daughters told him “There’s no way we are leaving Provo” and he said he told them “you have nothing to worry about”. He also talked about being excited to cheer on his son (currently 11 years old) as he played sports in the future at Timpview. He was glad he’ll get to be a dad and not a coach. Together with his new contract it sure seems he is in for the long haul at BYU.
- Kalani mentioned his wife is pregnant (due in July). He told me afterwards it was out there in social media but I hadn’t heard that before. Surprise baby, etc.

Maybe I’ll give some more details about the talk in the religion category later. All in all an amazing experience.

I’m proud of myself for not mentioning Tuiaki even once to Coach afterwards. Love Coach Kalani!