Abe Kim:

Welcome everyone to the Korean American Perspectives podcast. My name is Abraham Kim. I’m honored to be here with my friend Marshall Cho. Marshall, how you doing?

 

Marshall Cho:

Doing great, Abe. Thanks for having me.

 

Abe Kim:

So Marshall, let’s start from the very beginning. Tell me about, were you born here in the United States or were you born in Korea and immigrated to the United States?

 

Marshall Cho:

I was born in South Korea. Jeju Island, Jeju-do actually. My mother’s family is from there so when she was pregnant with me, she flew down to Jeju and had me and then we promptly came back to Seoul where my parents were making a living. And I immigrated to the U S when I was ten years old, close to ten years old, back in 1986 to Springfield, Oregon.

 

Abe Kim:

So how was it? You must’ve remembered some things when you’re ten, you can probably tell this new world in Oregon when you arrived.

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. I have a younger brother who’s two years younger than me and a sister who’s seven. And we always joked that even though the two year difference, my brother, Peter, doesn’t remember a thing, but I remember everything. So I finished through third grade as the listeners might be familiar with the school year and along with the calendar year. So we moved here in February of ‘86. I repeated third grade, but I recall everything. You know, my father came maybe three months prior to settle into this situation where he was going to be a manager of a 54 unit apartment complex, two stories high building. And you’re coming from Korea where apartment complex buildings are twenty, thirty stories. And you get here and you just, you realize that you really are in a completely different world. My father enticed me, and helped me to think about America as this great place that I can get to because I can eat unlimited amounts of bananas. And he was going to buy me a calculator that was only $10. So for third grade Marshall, my Korean name is Jung Ho. But, the third grader in me was, I couldn’t wait to get to America to experience those things.

 

Abe Kim:

So was this neighborhood, was it an all white neighborhood, a mixed neighborhood? What kind of neighborhood was it?

 

Marshall Cho:

Over the fifteen, about fifteen, sixteen years that my parents lived there and worked there, the demographics changed. But when we moved in ‘86, it was predominantly white. We were the only Korean family in the vicinity in the city. We’ll get into this a little bit. But the apartment complex was located right across the street from a really nice public park that had a tennis court, baseball field. And obviously for me, an outdoor basketball court that gave me access to learn the game at a pretty young age. So yeah, it was in a sense, an idyllic childhood, but also really a sheltered one. One that made me question my Korean American identity, but I wasn’t aware of it and wrestling with it until later on in my life. But in terms of my parents being around and having a presence in our lives, we were fortunate that again, as difficult and challenging as that job was, it allowed them to be around and see us grow up and attend all our sporting events and orchestra concerts and what not.

 

Abe Kim:

So how did, let’s dig into a little bit about that in terms of your, how you got into basketball? And I imagine, originally just started off with you just playing with some of the local kids and just playing basketball after school or during the weekends.

 

Marshall Cho:

You know, growing up in Korea, soccer and baseball was my favorite sport. As many people may understand, baseball culture is huge in Korea. But when I came to America, again, I was growing up on free and reduced lunch. You know, my parents were barely, not making a lot of money. And fortunately with the relatives who owned this apartment complex, we had free rent. So it’s not like I live my life feeling like I didn’t have a lot of things, but also, certain sports, I didn’t have access to. Right? So I didn’t have access to private tennis lessons or like, baseball was really expensive. For entry into baseball was really hard, right? Even though it was maybe fifty, sixty dollars for the season, you had to buy all the equipment and what not.

 

So I look back on that time a lot. And I’m so grateful that I had access to the game because all you needed was a park. You needed some people who were also out there playing and a basketball that costs any range from twenty to thirty dollars. So the first basketball that my parents bought me was in fourth grade. So I had been in the States for about a year. And again, I wore that thing out until, I’ll have a story later on, but until about seventh or eighth grade where I had to get a second basketball. But that was my introduction to the game and where I fell in love with the game.

 

Abe Kim:

So was that also a way to get you, I guess, accepted within the community of your kids? I imagine you were a very good basketball player when you were young and that connected you with a lot of the kids in the neighborhood.

 

Marshall Cho:

Ironically, like I didn’t, again, we talk about access, right? So I was able to play in the playgrounds, but my first organized basketball experience wasn’t until seventh grade when this is again back in the day when public schools had the budget and had prioritized sports in the schools, right? This is before clubs and pay-to-play model and all of that took away access for young people who wanted to play sports. But my entry into being accepted was having come at third grade. But growing up playing street soccer every day in Korea, I was pretty proficient at it and honestly, I was the best soccer player when I came to that particular elementary school. So even though I didn’t speak the language at a young age, I understood that sports, if you were good at it, then along came popularity and acceptance and all the perks of being good at a sport. So that allowed an entry into me, but for me, but in that particular neighborhood, it took me some time to really work on the game and get to a point where I thought I was like, I had a chance to be pretty good.

 

Abe Kim:

So did you go into team sport when you were in high school and when you got older? Is that how you got into, your skills in basketball were developed?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah, so as I mentioned that seventh grade team. I think it’s, again, it’s such an unfortunate thing when I think about it today, the seventh grade coach was my sixth grade teacher. That’s the very first time where you get to put on that jersey that has your, the name of your middle school and you’re representing your community. And it wasn’t an insane amount of games. I would say we only played about eight games for that season, but that was really the trigger into .. okay, now I know how to play organized sports. When I get to high school at Springfield high school, that’s what I want to do. So yeah, in that sense, I had that shortened season in middle schools. But predominantly my upbringing in terms of learning the game was on the playground. 

 

Until you get to high school, then you have regular access to workouts and gyms and things of that nature so .. where it’s a little bit more organized and formal and time-consuming in some sense. And I got to really sink my teeth into it, but at the same time, I loved other sports. So by the time I graduated from Springfield high school, I was a three-sport athlete. I played soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter and tennis in the spring. And so not to relive my high school glories, but this is probably the peak. But yeah, by the time I graduated my senior year, I was pretty good at it. And I ended up being captain of all three varsity sports.

 

Abe Kim:

Wow. So you were naturally athletic and you had a love of the game and all these three games by the time you left high school. So ..

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah, the athleticism was there. The vertical, I was vertically challenged however, so for the listeners, I’m five feet, eight inches. So there was a cap to how far I could get on, but yeah, it just, again, having a park across the street and having friends and peers who you can and younger siblings who you can go out and play with really lent itself to giving me that foundation.

 

Abe Kim:

So you went on to college and you studied to become a teacher eventually, correct?

 

Marshall Cho:

No, I studied to be an accountant, which isn’t as exciting. But I’m the oldest of three. As I mentioned before, growing up on free and reduced lunch and seeing how hard my parents have to work cleaning for other people, right. And taking care of just all the dirty work that comes with running an apartment complex. It really made me, again, I think a lot of listeners can relate to this and that my desire as the oldest son, the filial .. what is it, filial piety? That sense was strong. So, again, being the practical person that I was back then, I decided to go into accounting. I was probably a C minus average student. Meanwhile, my social sciences grades were all straight A’s. So like, I didn’t get very good academic counseling back then in terms of what I should have followed. But long story short, what happened was I had an accounting job lined up at Boeing.

 

I had done a summer internship prior, a very prestigious engineering internship. But I snuck in there as an accounting major and talked my way into it. Had a job that was all lined up. But at the same time, while I was getting rejected from all these accounting firms who saw my grades and saw through the nonsense, saw through my, facade and the lies of whatever this was. Mercifully, was rejected from a lot of these interviews. And in the process, I found an application for Teach For America while prepping actually to do a, interview, accounting job with Intel. So when I came out of that interview, I actually looked at it and I remember again, representation matters, right? And that being such a striking moment when I saw this brochure, and it was a diverse group of young people who were going into teaching.

 

And there was a, I remember there was an Asian American woman as one of the people featured on this brochure. And I thought to myself, that could be me. This sounds like something really exciting. And the irony of it all is, I got all these, I got rejected from all these accounting firms, like rightfully so. But Teach For America at that time was perhaps way harder to get into than any of the job interviews I was engaging in. And so I got in. And I got assigned to be a middle school math teacher in the South Bronx in the fall of 2000.

 

Abe Kim:

So you were there for how many years as .. for Teach For America?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah, Teach for America. It’s a two year commitment. So they serve to basically marry recent undergrads with school districts that are in need of young teachers in the inner cities or in rural areas of the country. And so it was a two-year commitment, but the school that I was teaching at it originally assigned to in the Bronx was one of the worst, lowest performing schools in the city. And at the end of my first year, our principal came in and told us that the school would be phased out over a two year period, so that we can start, we should start looking for a job two years down the line. But at the same time, the New York city Department of Education had an agreement with Columbia University Teachers College, where if I committed to a third year of teaching, then I could go and earn my master’s degree.

 

So I did that. I taught full-time and went part-time to get my masters in secondary math education. Finished my third year at that school in the Bronx. And then ended up, I thought to myself, I can’t leave this field knowing that the only thing that I experienced was a failed school environment. So, ironically, at the time, I was living in central Harlem. 118th and Lenox. And I had no idea that four blocks up the street from where I was living on 122nd was a charter school, Future Leaders Institute, a K through eight charter school that was doing these amazing things. And so I applied and ended up being a teacher there for three years and proud to say that the graduating class, when I left in the eight grade, our college placement director, Brian Smith, strong male, African American figure that grew up in Newark, knew the ropes had been to Lawrenceville, had been to Boston college.

 

Again, he was able to come serve back and give access to the prep school world for a lot of our graduating eight graders. So I felt like in that arc that I was able to experience both sides of winning and losing. Right. We’ll touch on that, in terms of coaching. But I did a lot of losing those first three years, but I also experienced what winning looked like in the successful inner city charter school. So I felt some sense of closure knowing that I served my part and I could move on to the next thing.

 

Abe Kim:

Was your family supportive about the idea of you going into teaching after you had been pursuing this kind of business career in your college years?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. You know, my dad was skeptical. He was, on his end, why would I turn down a lucrative well-paying job that would pay for my master’s degree if I wanted to.

 

And that, but my mom who was kind of always known. You know, mothers have this, right, that, not to throw dads under the bus, but my mother really knew what made me tick. And the fact that I was able to get accepted into Teach For America was based on the fact that all my free time, what I wanted to do was teach in my Sunday school, right. Or run summer camps or give private tennis lessons. And so the teacher part was always in me and she recognized that. She had been studying to be an art teacher herself. She’s the oldest of seven. And because she needed to make money and give access to college education for her younger siblings who were growing up in Jeju-do and trying to move into the big city in Seoul. She sacrificed that teaching career for herself.

 

She would have been the exceptional art teacher, but she went to work in a bank instead. So I think at that moment, when I, when I got accepted and told her. She said to me, well I knew you would be a teacher all along. And again, this, this is for the audience, hey, talk to your parents early on. You know, I’m here doing this on my own thinking that I’m taking care of my parents and all along. And I think for my mom, at least she would have been supportive that if I had to, if I decided to be an ed major from freshman year on, she would have been on board. But it was, it was again a confirmation that I was in the right place. And it ended up being one of the most fulfilling six years of my life.

 

Abe Kim:

Yeah. So after your teaching, you went to teacher’s college or your teaching masters. And then, and what did you study in doing your masters? That, were you going to continue on that math route for the foreseeable future as a career?

 

Marshall Cho:

No, I think, what I realized is, I love teaching middle school math. But I realized that I’m again masquerading, as I was doing, failing accounting major in college. I think I was masquerading as a math teacher, because again, this is, that was the assignment that Teach For America could give me cause they, when they looked at my transcript, they realized I didn’t have enough to teach social studies or any other subjects. So, I took calculus. I took enough math courses or they tossed me into the classroom. But to be honest with you, I went to University of Oregon and this, I’m sure there’s listeners that can feel this kind of pressure. For the model minority myth, so many Korean Americans go out and get that Ivy league degree or get that Stanford degree.

 

And so that opportunity to earn, I suppose, that Columbia University degree, I think if I’m really being honest with myself, I did it so that I could do that for my parents. Not that they really cared, but that I was able to go out and enter one of the top graduate school programs for education. And we won’t mention my GPA through my master’s degree, but I came out with that piece of paper. As I like to remind my players, hey, once you get that paper, the doors open to you. So ..

 

Abe Kim:

Absolutely. It doesn’t matter if you’re first place or your last place, everyone gets a piece of paper and that’s all that matters. You’re absolutely right.

 

Marshall Cho:

And that’s it. I am a teacher’s college grad. But it’s not the same for me. On Saturday mornings such as this one, you and I are talking, I got my Oregon, I’ll have my Oregon sweatshirt on later today or that type of thing. But it taught me a lot. It made me, it helped me. I think what I realized, even now as I’m, I have the opportunity to coach at the highest level in terms of high school that, again, the name is just a name, right? Hey, bring your game, not your name. So, I think that’s what I recognized when I was in that space. For that I’m grateful.

 

Abe Kim:

There must’ve been something more than just the name that really helped honed you at Columbia while you were there. Or was it, did you feel like it was just a, you were just biding your time from that period?

 

Marshall Cho:

I mean, I mean it was hard those first few years. Again, just imagine being a second and third year teacher at a failing school where during the day, I’m a middle school teacher, but there’s not a lot of master’s programs that are cure for middle school teachers. The program that I was running through was really geared towards somebody who aspired to be a high school teacher. So, in that sense, it’s similar today. There’s not a master’s program for anybody who wants to go into high school coaching or middle school coaching. And so it’s really up to you to make the most of what that program will be. To be honest with you, I only remember a handful of classes. But there was one class in particular, it was called ‘Problem Solving’ and the professor was great. He would just come in and he would just give you one hairy math problem that you would need multiple entries of, looking for a solution and you spent the entire period just talking with your peers and trying to figure out this problem. And so I think about that one a lot, because there’s two things about that. I mean, I was really struggling to get work done even, it was just such a taxing emotional day. And now you’re trying to do this additional work. And I remember just, when I turned in that, when you turn in that paper and it’s subpar work, but it’s the best you got for that moment. This particular professor was very gracious and probably passed me when I didn’t deserve to pass. But what, that was a way, that was really a reminder that I needed to turn around during the day and do the same for my students. You know, there, the pressure to get students who are two, three grade levels behind to, for them to pass the state math test is significant.

 

And it’s something, you can quickly lose perspective. When you’re, from the top, from the administration and the city on down, or you’re being told you need to move, Jimmy to a certain grade level. And yet Jimmy, the night before he didn’t eat, he didn’t eat. Or his mom didn’t come home or he has to take care of his five siblings. And so that type of empathy that I was lacking as a young teacher of all the places that I learned, I learned that in a particular class, in a ivory tower institution. So that was, again, I needed those reminders to get through those days because the work that I really had to do, all I had to give at that point, wasn’t my expertise, but it was my care and it was my commitment to my students. And so thanks to social media, twenty years later, I still keep in touch with a handful of them. And when they, when my former students thanked me for my time there, I .. there’s a pang of guilt, right, knowing that I didn’t give him the best that I was capable of, that I have today to give them. But, it’s their grace to me that reminds me that I did the best I could at that time with what I had.

 

Abe Kim:

So, walk me through your journey from your teacher’s career to when you found basketball as a platform to connect with young people. I understand this is right around this time is when you start, when you discovered how basketball, it could be another, another channel you can connect with young people, and speak to them and teach them. So walk me through that journey.

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah so, even to rewind it back a little bit, my senior year, I was, again, mentioned that I was a starting point guard, starting captain, captain in name only really. I didn’t know what it really meant to lead my peers, keep them accountable to get the most out of each other, to serve them. I look back on that time and realize that the things that I lacked, in terms of leading peers, I needed my coaches to pour into me so that I could do that, right. So I, that’s something that I try to do today for my players, to offer that type of mentorship. But, I tore my ACL with three games to go, my senior year. So I didn’t even get to finish out my senior career.

 

I ended up kind of limping into the tennis season and then completely tore my ACL. And so I was really out of action for about a year. And then, when I got to college again, I spent a lot of time with our student Asian American Christian ministry, probably majored in that more than the accounting, at the end of the day. And, surrounded myself with other Asian Americans, I went from a predominantly white community to Asian American Christian community. So that was sort of my bubble, but it was a space where I could find myself. Right. And then all of a sudden, now I’m plugged in and I’m dropped off into a community in the South Bronx that’s predominantly African American and Puerto Rican and Dominican and Guatemalan, Honduran, again, you’re, you’re wrestling with your identity in that sense, right. 

 

But again, and for me looking back, thinking to myself, gosh, like had I studied harder in high school, maybe if I didn’t waste so much time on the basketball court, maybe I’d be somewhere else. You catch yourself thinking that way. Sometimes, even though every day I walked into my classroom during those three years, as challenging as it was, I was walking on clouds. I loved every minute of it. But what, really, the moment that made me realize that it wasn’t a waste, that all that time that I spent on the court was actually going to be very useful was the second day during recess hours, I went out to the yards and kids are all running around. You know, some of them were playing handball. Some of them are just playing tag and just being goofy.

 

But there was a group of kids playing basketball. And again, this is, I had just gone through the first day where I have 35 students in 30 chairs. I have students challenging me because the classroom that I had took over prior year, they had gone through three different teachers. They test, the kids are going to test you right away. And what they’re going to test you on is, are you going to stick around? Are you going to bail on us just like the other teachers, or are you really like what you say, what you are? And so that second day, I went out and I targeted, I identified the best player on the floor and I just went right up to them and I challenged them to a one-on-one game. And again, I’m five eight, this kid probably, like a five ten seventh grader, taller than me, but I had enough wits about me and know-how to beat him one-on-one and do it in a fashion where, you know, really left an impression on my students.

 

So you can imagine as we’re going back into the classroom, I mean, the kids are, lost their minds. You know, they found their hero and it’s Mr. Cho. ‘Cause Mr. Cho has game and, and he just gave them mad buckets, you know? So, that period, lunch period, usually when kids are coming back from recess, they don’t want, the last thing they want to do is be in the classroom. But they couldn’t wait to come in and talk about what I did, you know? And so that was an affirmation that all those years of, spent on the playgrounds on Mill Street wasn’t for waste.

 

Abe Kim:

So walk me through where you went from becoming a teacher, you discovered basketball and then, and then basketball became a career track in terms of your own career development. Walk me through that journey, how you got to that point, and I know it involves also, you being overseas. So, walk me through that journey.

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. And I would have to say rediscover, right? I discovered it in fourth grade and I lost track of it, I think in college. And I rediscovered, in a different light, not as a player, but as a coach. As somebody who would not just play the game and get joy out of the playing piece, but using the game and giving it back to somebody else and letting that person discover, just like I did. So my fifth and sixth year, now I’m fast forward, I’m in this charter school in Harlem. And for whatever reason, our principal, our assistant principal decided that we were going to join a charter school. And I was the coach. Because again, he had seen me playing out in the playgrounds during recess and lunch hours with the kids. So I’m the guy to coach this team.

 

So we start with this team and I had kids from, you know, because we were such a small school, we had players from fifth grade all the way to eighth grade. And so we start, embark on the season then we, turns out we’re pretty good. And we go an entire season, that fifth year, that’s my first official year of coaching in 2004, 2005. And we get to the championship game undefeated, and we lose in just the most heartbreaking fashion. I mean, these kids are in tears. A lot of them, or they can’t believe, they’re going to quit. And, the other team was rushing the floor talking trash. And if you, for anybody who might be familiar with working with young men in inner city. You know, again, I don’t want to paint this stereotypical picture, but in particular in that time in Harlem, the city that, that pocket was going through just rapid gentrification. Right? And not only that, I had players, of course. You know, fate would have it, most of the players who were on the team were kids who struggled in the classroom.

 

So again, being able to use the game to hold them accountable. Hey, if you don’t have, if you don’t do your homework, if you don’t pass your tests, you don’t play. And so not only the carrot of the game, but the accountability that allowed this young group to have, it was really powerful. But at the same time, similar to how these kids in the South Bronx tested me. Are you going to abandon me? Are you leaving me? Are you, are you going to be one who’s committed on this walk with me? Those are the things that young people want to know. Heck, adults I think, we desire that too. But, I had to in that moment remind them, hey, we’re coming back. We’re going to stick together on this and we’re going to win next year.

 

And so that allowed us to really bounce back from that moment of adversity, which many basketball teams you see do, even at, at the highest levels. But I was doing that with my middle school group of seventh and eighth graders predominantly. And what we embarked on, we probably spent more time in the gym as a group than any other middle school group in the city. And again, as storybook ending would have it, we come back the next year and this is almost like a Disney after-school movie kids special. And we come across opponents that are even better than the ones we lost the prior year, but we get through it. And we ended up winning the city, New York city charter school championship. And at the end, when we won, there was a, the championship game was kind of an afterthought. The semifinal game was really tough.

 

It was a team that had beaten us in the beginning of the year. And I was thinking to myself, I promised these kids we’re going to come back and we’re going to win. And this opponent is even better and bigger. And there’s, I just don’t see how we’re going to do it. And the night before the summit final game, again, Brian Smith, a good friend of mine that I’d mentioned earlier. And he turns to me, he says, you know what, Marshall, like as long, you know, a lot of these kids may end up going to other programs, but this might be the last time they ever have a chance to win a championship of some sort. So I’m like, thanks, buddy. Thanks for adding that added pressure, a lot more pressure. But it was, I realized that this moment in time may never come again.

 

And they, I, I wanted the, and it was also a realization that this wasn’t something that I wanted for myself, that I deeply desired for my players to experience this. And I think that’s what, that was the hook. That, and when I knew that I was meant to do this, because it wasn’t about me, it was about my players. And so, when we finally won and the kids spontaneously, they lifted me up on their shoulders and we were parading around the gym to our home, crowd section. And I started pumping my arms. And next thing I know, just the relief of knowing that we delivered on that promise. I just wept. It was so embarrassing because everybody’s out there, oh, Coach Cho’s crying. But I, that, all that, it was just that sense of relief, like, okay, like, we did it, like, these kids will experience holding up this trophy. And so that’s really when the, when the bug struck. Ironically, I have not won a championship since that moment. So God has a funny sense of humor. So I’m still on that chase. He hooked me in, and here I am 15 years later. But that’s my origin story in terms of coaching.

 

Abe Kim:

So, no doubt that moment for all those students, including you, was a, I would imagine it was a pivotal moment for them that what they put their minds to, hard work, coming together as a team, they can achieve success. And like you said, these opportunities are rare and for a team or group of young people with a great teacher like yourself to be confronted with the opportunity to really become the one on top is probably amazing. So, yeah, so, but a few. And then, but you ended up leaving the school soon after, correct?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. At the time, I was dating, who’s Connie, who’s now my wife. She was working in Mozambique as a fellow in the public health, international public health sector. And so she was working on HIV/AIDS prevention projects in Mozambique. So we had, we had been doing the long distance relationship for that, for that last year that I was teaching. I’m really thankful that she actually, she came back during her fellowship and she got to see that game. So we can both point to it and blame that moment for the journey that we’ve been on. But what happened was I finished out my sixth year of teaching. She came back from Mozambique. We got married in August. And then I moved out to Mozambique following her. I was a trailing spouse as they call it. And so I, my identity had been so rooted in being the inner city school teacher.

 

And if I’m being completely honest with you, you wrestle with your identity, but you, I think a lot of it, you also wrestle with your pride, right? Because what you end up getting, what I ended up getting a lot during those six years was a lot of pat on the back, right? ‘Cause there wasn’t a lot of Korean Americans choosing to go into this field. A lot of my friends who were in Manhattan were again, working in finance or banking or lawyers. And so they, I knew that a lot of my friends, Korean American peers in particular were living vicariously through what I was doing. But when I got out to Mozambique, I, it, that, that identity was stripped away. It’s a former Portuguese colony. I don’t speak Portuguese. My wife is the one with the full-time job, I don’t have a job.

 

And so it was really a period of like, trying to figure out what, what’s next, what, what should I be embarking on? And fate would have it, what I ended up finding out was the NBA was holding a camp as part of their NBA Cares initiative. They were, they were holding the camp every year called Basketball Without Borders. They would run it in Europe and Asia, but they also had a big camp in Africa. And what they would then be able to do is for half a week or, and culminating in the weekend, they would send NBA players, coaches, scouts, and they would run this camp. And they would invite typically 60 to a hundred top African players from all over the continent into Johannesburg.

 

And so when I found out that it was only a five-hour bus ride from Maputo, the capital city in Mozambique, to Johannesburg, I cold-called and emailed a bunch of people. Got a lot of rejections, but one person in particular wrote back and said, hey, why don’t you come and volunteer? And so I hopped on the bus. I literally, maybe a week or two into having moved to Mozambique, hopped on a Greyhound, the Mozambican Greyhound, whatever they would call it. Hopped and went straight into downtown Joburg, which you may understand it’s very, it’s not the safest place, you know? And so, and I had a Zimbabwean missionary pick me up at the bus station, somebody that knew, you know, a friend of a friend, and he took me down to Johannesburg to be a volunteer coach. And so, that next day I walk into the gym, they hand me the assignment sheet and basketball fans out there will appreciate this. Again, I told you about me being vertically challenged. I was assigned to a rebounding and shot blocking station with Dikembe Mutombo and Manute Bol. Manute Bol, seven foot seven inches tall from Sudan, Dikembe, seven-three, shot blocking, “No, no, no” legend of Georgetown. And so that was my introduction into, you know, being in a space where people were doing basketball full-time. So that, that sparked a plug and said, Hey, maybe this is something that I, I can aspire to do. I’ll try to do basketball coaching full-time.

 

Abe Kim:

Yeah. Wow, that’s. A Korean American in Mozambique finding opportunity in Johannesburg, South Africa. It almost sounds like a novel, in some ways.

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah, you can’t write that script. Somebody else is writing that for me.

 

Abe Kim:

As you got involved with this camp, you got more deeply involved with the camp and you got the opportunity to link up with Nike as well through this process, share with me that experience.

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. So for that camp in particular, it’s a big show, right? So they come and go and I think even 20 years. How long has it been? 14 years later, the NBA has grown to where they have, hold offices and run programs. Right? So it wasn’t, they didn’t want it to be a one-off thing. But what that allowed me to do at that camp was there was a guy, a gentleman from Spain who had recently been hired to coach the Mozambican women’s national team, Alberto Blanco, who’s become a good friend. And so when he and I connected at that camp, he said, hey, when you come back, we’ll reconnect in Mozambique and I’ll plug you in with the national coaches in that scene. So, again, I ended up. I was living in Chai-Chai, which was three hours north of Maputo. Really nothing going on in the sleepy town that had a very devastating flood, maybe five, six years prior. It was a city, it was a village really on the rebound.

 

And I ended up building a basketball court in my backyard and having local kids come and that’s who taught me how to speak Portuguese. And basically as my wife puts it, I was running a daycare of 40, 50 kids. She would come from a full day of work, office work, programming work, and then find, you know, in our backyard still would, you know, kids of all ages playing basketball barefoot. So we’re staying on that script, the novel form, here, Abe. But I ended up being really plugged in, and coaching at the, at the highest level, helping with the junior national team, helping with one of the top clubs in the continent or in the, in Mozambique. And so I just loved coaching. But chance would have it, after my second year in Mozambique, I came back to Portland, Oregon.

 

For the listeners out there, Beaverton, Oregon is where the world headquarters for Nike is situated. And during this time, over the years, I had found a mentor, Kevin Carroll, who is a former athletic trainer for the Sixers. When Allen Iverson was playing back then, he ended up being a consultant or in-house consultant, you know, catalyst for Nike. And he put me in touch with a gentleman, Tony Dorado, who was the national high school manager for Nike. And so we had a coffee hour, a coffee meeting, an informational meeting on campus. And I told him, I said, hey, I have a, I have a year left in this country and doing all this coaching, I love it. What would you suggest that I do with this finite time that I have left here to have an impact, to leave an impact? And he told me, he gave me advice that I wasn’t ready to listen to at the time, but he challenged me as you’ve done in the CKA event this past year.

 

He challenged me. And his challenge to me was, hey, you have to coach the coaches. And I didn’t want to do that because I love being a coach. I didn’t want to deal with adults. But as I came back, I flew back to Mozambique a few weeks later. And as I really wrestled with it and thought about it, that was the only way for the work that I had started to carry on. So I organized a coach’s clinics on a regular basis. I picked a handful of coaches that I mentored. And when I was leaving that meeting at Nike, the thing that Tony said to me was if you find a way to provide hotel and transportation, flight, to Mozambique, I will send you one of my Nike elite high school coaches.

 

And so, you know, that, I mean, for him to do that at that moment, I don’t know what, what motivated him to do that, but that’s, you know, we still talk about it to this day what, why, how, how did that come about? But long story short, I found a way for them to come out. And what Tony did was he chose Mike Jones, who was the head basketball coach at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, one of the most storied high school programs in the country. And they came out, did a clinic that I organized – coach’s clinic, and kid’s clinic for a week. And then the second night when they were during their stay, Mike turned to me and said, if you ever come back to the States, I want you to join my coaching staff at DeMatha.

 

So that was my Nike and DeMatha connection. As fate would have it, my wife ended up getting a job in Baltimore. And I spent the next three years commuting, reverse commuting to Hyattsville, Maryland, near College Park, coaching at this high profile basketball program.

 

Abe Kim:

So what would you say, as I’m listening to you, it sounds like, like a storybook, you know, novel story that all of these people are connecting. Met these people through happenstance and other things, and they introduced you to others and really set up your return back to the United States and your coaching here in the United States. So, but obviously your time in Mozambique was, very, was an incredible growing period for you as a coach. And I’m wondering, if you could put, if you could say one big takeaway that you’d be taking from your experience in Mozambique, what would that be? That really put you on a different path as a coach?

 

Marshall Cho:

That’s a really good, yeah, that’s a really good question.

 

Abe Kim:

Aside from learning Portuguese. I imagine you were fluent in Portuguese by the time you left.

 

Marshall Cho:

I was fluent enough to coach on the court. You know, it was a deeper reminder. I don’t think it’s something that I take away and say, hey, this is the one thing I learned. But because again, that, that spark was really started back in Harlem. But it was, I’ve had, I had enough experiences during that time where my wife and I took in a young man who .. that I befriended in Chai-Chai. An older, you know, a teenager at the time when we met him, Issufo Gulamo is his name. And he, honestly, if he grew up in the States, again, had the type of access that I had even in Springfield, he would have had, you know, he would be somebody who would have had his college paid for, right, through basketball. And so we took him in to live with us the last year.

 

And it was a busy year as you can imagine. You know, I was doing all this work to organize the clinic. My wife, and actually, I had a significant loss. You know, we had a, we were expecting a baby. We lost her in February. So it was one of those moments. She was to be, Avery is her name. And I bring this up and it’s not something I talk about often. But I want, when I look back on one of the most darkest, hardest times in my life, it’s really basketball and the .. For me to bounce back from that, that time was to pour into my players and pour into Issufo who was living with us and to try to live a life that would make Avery proud. Right. So a lot of things converged at the end as this, this race to beat time in Mozambique and try to come back to the States. In those months from February to June, I was working on rehabilitating a basketball court with the U.S. Embassy.

 

So I had written up some grants. I had partnered with a local organization and we were almost close to finishing it off. And I had to leave before it was done. Right. So it’s, again, one of those moments where the sense of closure that I had explained to you with in terms of winning that championship in middle school and in Harlem and sending them off to all these great prep schools, I felt like I didn’t get to have that, right. I left behind a daughter really. And I think about her memory a lot as it drives me towards how I want to conduct myself on the sidelines today. But, and at the same time, Issufo, this young man that I had this, aspirations for him to come to the U.S. and again, use basketball as a platform and something for him to open up doors for.

 

It was really hard. We ended up not being able to find any opportunities for him in the U.S. so I had to leave him behind where it felt like things were undone. And so as my own career was taking off, I had this opportunity to join DeMatha, and handle my business, I had some unfinished business back in Mozambique. But what that time really reminded me was as long as I get something started, as long as I pour into the people around me, it turns out they, they they’d been equipped and empowered to do, finish the job themselves. And that’s ultimately, I think the, the lesson that I learned when you think about coaching the coaches, it’s not your job to do everything. The only thing that you’re supposed to do is pour into the people that you know, that you’re supposed to be leading by serving them, right?

 

So Issufo, literally a month later, gives me a call and says, coach, I’m going to Columbia. I said, what are you talking about? And he, and another teammate that I coached, Stam. They, the two of them got a fellowship to study in Columbia to be PE teachers, you know, based on their basketball prowess. So it wasn’t the particular vision that I had of him, but it was still, they were using basketball that opened doors for them to go and get a college degree. And Yesufu came back and now he’s living in Maputo, teaching at the American International School of Mozambique where I taught and opened doors for him there. And so he’s carrying on that coaching legacy, ironically. The court that I didn’t get to finish. I was about 90% done with it.

 

In July, I’m having lunch with a good friend of mine in DC, and I get a call, international call from Mozambique. And it is the acting ambassador there, Todd Chapman, who was actually, I had also started a basketball team at the American International School of Mozambique. Had all these expat kids and I .. It’s a school that I told my wife, I would never teach at that school because I want to work with the people. I’m with my people, I’m with my Africans out there, you know, in the fields and on the courts. And of course, fate would have it, I’m teaching at this school that’s the, teaching the wealthiest students in the country. And he calls me and he says, hey, you know that court you started, we’re going to have an event. We finished it. And we’re going to have an inauguration event with Teresa Edwards, who is the all-time winning gold medal, gold medalist, Olympic medalist, basketball player, a Hall of Famer, a living legend and Tracy Murray, who played at UCLA and then played in the NBA for many, many years. They were invited to be at this court for opening celebration. And so I got this random call while I’m in DC from the ambassador saying, hey, we did this, you did this. And again, it was those, those are the reminders that I carry with me today that, empowering me to continue to pour into the kids and my assistant coaches, knowing that as long as I do my part in serving them that the end result like we talk about in games will take care of itself.

 

Abe Kim:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Amazing story. So let’s move forward into, you’re back in the United States and you’re part of this amazing team of coaches and in Maryland and you were there for a number of, and then you ended up in Oregon, ultimately. So kind of walk me through that. And I understand along the way, you also taught at the college level as well, right. Or coached at the college level as well. So,

 

Marshall Cho:

So when I, when I was coming from the Basketball without Borders camp in 2006, I kind of gave myself a goal and said, hey, I want to be the first Korean American division one head coach. You know, and I thought to myself, that would be a 10 year journey at least. Right? So by the time I got to DeMatha, I was 32, 33 years old, having pivoted to trying to be a professional basketball coach without professional pay, unfortunately. I was doing the reverse, I probably poured into that job more than I got out of it financially, because it was so expensive just driving back and forth for three years. And the stipend each year from DeMatha was a thousand dollars. So what I, what I used that time was I, I said to myself, this is going to be where I get my master’s degree in teaching basketball.

 

And again, one of the most historic programs, Mike Jones, who has done a phenomenal job taking over for Morgan Wootten, who is generally regarded as the best high school coach. He was, I believe, the first high school coach to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. So now I’m in this historic program. And I start out at the bottom of the totem pole as an assistant, freshman assistant coach. I’m 33 years old, not making any money and I’m working my way up from the bottom, basically. So I did that, I progressed on to be the head freshman coach the second year and the head JV coach the third year. And DeMatha is such a program in that there’s not a lot of JV high school coaches making the leap to a division one coaching staff. But at the time an opportunity came up for me to join the University of Portland coaching staff as a director of basketball operations. It was a chance to come back home. You know, we had just had our first child Nathaniel in Baltimore, and it was just hard doing that commute while my wife was working full time. We didn’t have family. So we made that decision, a hard one, but also the right one, I believe to move, move back home. So I ended up joining the University of Portland coaching staff for two years. And it was on my way to, I guess, this, you know, the next chapter of the story to try to be a division one basketball coach.

 

Abe Kim:

So you’re in Oregon. And I understand during this time there were some family issues that emerged that made you decide that you were kind of at a decision point about your career, as well as how to take care of your family. And you decided to do your family. So share with, share with me about that.

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. And I know you’re going to have, my good friend, Steve Baik, on some interview after, and it’s something that he and I talk about a lot, just in terms of the amount of sacrifice that we had to make to make our way up in this profession. But really the sacrifice that our, our wives have to make. My wife was, she was pregnant with our second child. You know, the division one coaching world doesn’t really lend itself to, you know, in terms of the hours that we put in. I, you know, there are coaches who do a good job of balancing that. But I don’t know if there’s a real life work balance when it comes to that environment. So I was struggling with that number one. But really, my second year as I was going into our second season, we had just had a couple of games, but in November, late November of my second year on the coaching staff there, my mother got diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.

 

And so I’m sure a lot of the listeners out there have had family members who have gone through it or going through it. But for me, it was my first bout with really having somebody close to me. I’ve had uncles, or I’ve had my grand aunts and others who had it. But it was a, it was a scary time. We didn’t know how, you know, really, she was very close to having the cancer cells spread to her organs. It was already in her bones. And so it was an extremely stressful time. And I remember in January, we had this game. University of Portland, for the basketball fans out there, is in the same conference as Gonzaga, UIU, St Mary’s, really difficult conference. And again, our second year I was coming from DeMatha where we used to win all the games, and I’m on this coaching staff where we’re losing majority of our games.

And we beat Gonzaga for the first time in, I want to say like 20 years and the students are rushing the court. And I remember distinctly thinking to myself, what am I doing here? What is this all for? My mom is, we don’t know if she’s gonna make it. And so that was a wake up call. And at the time, my brother, who is Peter Cho. My younger brother who was in his own right making his way in New York city, winning the Michelin star, working at the restaurants, like the Spotted Pig and The Breslin, and he was wrestling with what to do next. And it really crystallized for us that he’s, he quit the job right away. And with his wife, Young, they moved back to play a part in helping to take our mom to the chemo treatments and what not.

 

And by that, end of that June, my younger sister who’s also teaching through Teach For America. Teaching as a grade school teacher in Brooklyn, in Bed-Stuy, she had moved back. So what we ended up doing was we, we had kind of left this bubble of Oregon, but we, as a sibling, as a family, we were all congregating back to take care of our mom. And there is a happy ending. Because all these years later, she’s still getting first rate treatment. And she’s been able to help launch my brother’s restaurant here, Han Oak. She’s been able to see the two youngest grandkids that my sister Maggie had, and she’s able to attend my high school game. So in that sense, that term, that sense of family was very strong in us. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we grew up really with a lot of challenges and, and seeing them sacrifice a lot, but that’s, it gave me an outlet to leave the college game and pop into the high school game where I’m the, I just finished my fifth year as the head coach at Lake Oswego High School.

 

Abe Kim:

So how, how is it different from coaching at the high school level than going to the college level? And it comes back to, I mean, is, do you sense there’s a .. You know, obviously you’re working with older students and other things like that. But, tell me the, is there a substantive difference in terms of when you’re coaching students at this different age brackets?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. I just think in high school, they’re, they’re not fully formed. They’re trying to find out who they are. And I understand that in college, you do that as well, but by the time you come to a young man or a woman gets onto campus at 18, they’ve been formed for the most part. So for me as a coach, leading young men in this particular case and catching them at 15 years old. And in fact, one of our core values of our program is presence.

 

So that means for me, I want them to have a sense of pride, similar to what I had, right. When I went to Hamlin Middle School, all I wanted to do was be the starting point guard at Springfield High School. You know, so for the kids growing up in Lake Oswego, I have access to them when they’re fourth, fifth graders. Right? And so I get to cultivate that sense of pride and community, that desire and the hope to represent that community. So it is in some sense, it’s a eight year journey if I’m lucky with some of these guys, because I’ll meet them at fourth grade for our youth program. And some of them who graduate on, you know, as 12th graders, I will have had a hand. A consistent hand. I think I talked, I’ve been talking about that a lot with just even our school district, how many other teachers are there that you get to have for an eight year journey?

 

Oftentimes you have a math teacher or English teacher, or your homeroom teacher, you may have for a year. You know, that’s it. You know, maybe in high school, you have a teacher, you can take two different courses with, over a sophomore year, to a senior year. But for myself as a, the face of the program, but also somebody who has an active, engaged interest in their development on and off the court. It’s a significant opportunity to, to form and shape these young minds into thinking about not just themselves. I think that the values that I want to impart on them is to, you know. We live in a pretty privileged community here, to be honest with you. Socioeconomically, it’s the wealthiest in the state. So how do you, how do I embed the values of service, embed the values of humility, teach them about them being a bigger, part of something bigger than themselves. It’s a pretty significant opportunity to impact lives in that sense.

 

Abe Kim:

So, I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of great, great athletes come through your program at your high school, Lake Oswego and other, and at the college level and so forth. But I’m wondering, how do you, what makes a good player, a great player, right? What do you see in students that are, if they work on these things that can make them then a great player? Is there something that you try to instill in them as a coach or teach your students to reach the highest levels of excellence in sports?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. The ones that have gone on to have success. So I think a lot of it, what you just mentioned, I think it’s, it’s incumbent upon the coach to set that vision and set up a mission that allows them to be playing their best basketball by the time they are seniors. So for us, we have, when I first took over the program, I knew that with middle school or high school kids, you, you can’t lie to, you, if you’re not authentic, if you’re, what you see isn’t what you get, they’re going to sniff you out really quick. And so I recognize that I’m not one of these people who can come up with the ten commandments or come up with an entire pyramid of excellence or a list of things that we need to do. I knew that we needed to just dominate the simple. So pick two or three core values that would, that would really, you know, when people look at our program and our players say, this is what Lake Oswego basketball is about.

 

So for me, the three prior years to get into Lake Oswego, I had read a book by Jon Gordon. He had written a book called One Word. And it was, you know, when you have a New Year’s resolution, you say, you come up with these goals that you’re going to go to the gym every day, I’m going to lose 20 pounds, or I’m going to learn a new craft. But a lot of times, these resolutions, they fade away ‘cause it’s, there isn’t a singular focus, right? So the book encourages you to pick a word and let that be the theme of the year. So when I was coaching at University of Portland, I was really, again, if I’m being honest, I was wrestling with, am I good enough? Do I belong here? And so when I reflected upon how scared I acted over the course of the year, instead of being, having a bias for action, I chose the word courage and said, I’m going to find courage and this is going to define my year.

 

And then the year after that, it was presence. I’m going to have a presence. Any, any time I step into a room, people are going to know that I was there. Right? But at the same time, I’m going to fully engage in whatever task that is in front of me. So that was the theme for me the second year. And so when I got to Lake Oswego, I, I, I knew that at least those two things I can authentically demonstrate and be me, and impart my fingerprints all over the program in that way. And then the word that I chose for that first year was trust. That I wasn’t, again, this is the immigrant in me, that knowing that when I came to Springfield, I was an outsider.

 

When I went to New York city, again, I was an outsider. When I went to Mozambique, I was definitely an outsider. And when I came to DeMatha, even this historic program, I was an outsider. I was one out of the 11 coaches that first year. I was the only non-DeMatha graduate. So what that meant was I had to earn trust. Right? And so that meant, again, the same thing as I shared with you earlier. My first days of teaching, if I didn’t earn trust with those students, that I would be there, that I’m not leaving them. There’s no way I would’ve made it through the first months. I’ve seen peers quit months into the job. So it’s the same thing. You know, I think a lot of people had some skepticism when I first took over this program. A lot of parents in particular, who had their own agendas for their children. But I had to set a vision and a mission to say, hey, this is a program that’s going to reflect the community.

 

And so I went about doing that. You know, a lot of, a lot of parents came out of the woodworks looking to transfer in. I just closed the door. I said, no, like we may not, we’re not going to be very good the first few years. But we’re going to do it with the players who grew up in the backyard here. So my first year we were 11 and 14, end the season on a heartbreaking loss. Second year, we’re one game better, 12 and 13. Again, end the season on a heartbreaking last second possession. And entering that third year, there was a lot of people who doubt, who had some questions. You know, can this guy do it? And so, fortunately, I’m still here. We ended up turning the corner my third year and we won league. We ended up having a pretty good season, but those are the core values upon which we built the program. And so if any of my players who’ve come through it, if they exhibit those three qualities when I reflect on it, they’re the ones who exceeded being just good players, but they really ended up being great players who were able to leave a legacy of their own behind.

 

Abe Kim:

I want to shift to coaching. We’ve had previous conversations about how coaching is very all-consuming. I think what is kind of underlying all of this as we’re talking to you about your life as a coach. So there’s a lot of investment of your time. There’s a lot of investment of yourself. There’s a lot of investment of financial means as well. And I’m wondering as a coach, especially as you’re investing, in your case, young men that are going through your teams. How do you maintain balance? How do you maintain sanity? Because you’re molding these, let’s just say these untrained stallions, let’s call them stallions. And on top of that you’re dealing with parents, you’re dealing with schools, bureaucracy, you’re dealing with communities. And sports is such an emotional activity where it can mobilize a community, but it can also create all kinds of havoc within the community, right? And so, and as a coach, you’re right in the middle of all of that, and you have to balance all of that. So I wonder as a coach, especially of an important team playing at such a high level, that how do you maintain balance?

 

Marshall Cho:

First of all, I think it’s just really hard to maintain that. I think if you’re a workaholic to be wired. To be somebody who just pours into a job or an endeavor or an organization, I think it’s really hard. What I’ve really focused on in the last few years as I was telling you about how I came in as a new coach and I had to set the agenda and the vision, right? But at the end of the day, even then, we came up short. So that third year we ended up losing again. This is like a running theme. We, heartbreaking last second loss, overtime loss. So it’s it’s, hey, could this get any harder? You know, and it just kept on getting harder and harder. And by the fourth year, we were the number one ranked team in the state in January on. 

 

So for the last two months of the year, we were the number one ranked team. Had a target on our backs. And so, in one sense, I’ve made it, right? I, hey, I delivered on what I promised. Here we are. But we haven’t won the big one yet. And we ended up actually losing in the semifinal. Not much different if you really want to talk about the arc of the story to my very first year of teaching, coaching in Harlem. But because the stress was so heavy, what I wanted to do in terms of, I guess. When you use that word balance, I think, okay, I have a load, right? I can’t carry the whole thing. And I always told my players, a coach-led team is good, but a player-led team is great.

 

So you talk about that whole great, good to great shift. And so I wanted the players to come up with their own word for the year. And the word that they came up with was joy. That they wouldn’t lose perspective, that this is all fun and that we’re supposed to have joy in the process and the journey. So even when we lost in the semifinal game. Devastating. But we ended up in the state tournament, they actually have you play a third place game, which is in some ways, it’s almost torture, right? Because it’s a reminder again that you didn’t get there. But what we were able to do is I reminded them, not every team gets to spend with the win, a season with a win. So we ended up, even though emotionally, it was really hard to bounce back and play the next day, we won that game.

 

And what I remember is the joy that everybody got to have, having that sense of closure again. They won something, they ended the season on a win. And so joy was my fourth year. And this year with COVID, we ended up, we won league. We were undefeated. We had a really rocky start of the year, but we won our league for the third year running. And even though we weren’t the number one seed like the year before, we were the number seven seed. I knew that once we got to the quarter finals that we had a chance and it was because the word that our players chose for this year was belief. That it was the juniors who experienced that loss. The ones who took up the torch to lead their group this year, Casey Graver and Sam Abere, great players, great graduates of our program, great representation of who we are. 

 

They chose the word belief and they, Abe, I kid you not. They honestly believed that we were going to win at all until the game was canceled that day of our quarterfinal game. But it serves to remind me again, it’s, I think that’s the running theme for us in terms of coaching. It’s really a faith-based endeavor. You know, any one team gets to hold up the trophy at the end. And so how do you get your group to share that workload? And that’s really something I’m working on now that even though I myself don’t have that balance, if I surround myself, but I have exceptional assistant coaches who are just as invested into the well-being of my players as I am. And so now I have brothers really, of mine that are carrying the load with me. I think that’s a special thing to be a part of.

 

Abe Kim:

So how has COVID-19 impacted coaching, your teaching, and how is the team, I’m sure with a lot of games canceled or the prospects of canceling, it’s impacted what you’re doing in Oregon?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. I think the coaching or the sports industry, the world isn’t any different. You know, we’re not immune to it than any other businesses or entrepreneurial spirit pursuits that people may have out there. We, I really struggle with it. You know, I think to be honest with you, this is my identity. So in some ways it feels very similar to those barren, early days in Chai-Chai. What am I doing? What am I, what can I do next? You know, how do I provide for my family? I think those are all things, questions that we struggle with. A couple things I am proud of is that we, I think it really forces you as a leader of a community that this job is bigger than just being a high school coach, right? On the, when the seasons run from November to March, I think this is in that sense, it’s a year round.

 

I can’t just all of a sudden decide to take that hat off because if I go to the local grocery market, some seventh grader who’s been in my camp, hey, there’s Coach Cho and the mom or the dad will come and we’ll talk. And so that kind of, in that sense, it’s almost like being a pastor of a community or maybe a school president. It’s somebody that, again, I’m on the forefront, right? Of representing our community. So what I’ve been thinking about a lot, and fortunately, the most famous alum that we have in our basketball program is Kevin Love. So he recently won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, and it was through his work talking about mental health. And when he shares his testimony, it’s really when he was a pudgy seventh grader that he lost his grandmother and he really didn’t know how to, he never learned how to cope and grieve properly.

 

And it ended up, you know, kind of coming all back when he was this accomplished world famous basketball player. And so I think about that a lot. I think I had this, visions of a young Kevin Love that’s in my camp. How would I serve them? You know, and it’s something as simple as how are you doing? Like, what do you need? How can I help you? How can I shout you out? What’d you? What went well today? And so it’s really shifted from, because I have a captive audience, because I have kids aspiring to play for me, now I can turn around and use that platform and serve the kids and check in on them. You know, we’ve done Zoom workouts for our high school guys for about three months straight. I don’t know if there’s another high school program that would, did that kind of work.

 

But what it allowed me to do was, just like this, you and I are on a Zoom call. Even though this is a podcast, people will be listening to just our voices. But for right now, I get to see your face and you get to see mine and we get to check in on each other. And that kind of connection, even though it’s virtual and we all get Zoomed out. But the kids, what I’ve found in the three months is that they really, they desire it. They need it. And so pivoting to that and understanding, really forcing myself to look at them as teenage boys first, before they’re potential basketball players for me has been a good wake up call and a reminder of why we do this.

 

Abe Kim:

So one of the unique things is you’re, there’s not a lot of Korean American coaches in this, in sports, or just in any sports in general. And certainly you’re serving as a role model and connecting with other, not only Korean Americans, but also you’re representative of working with a lot of different racial and ethnic groups, particularly African-American students, white students, Hispanic students and across the board. And, I’m wondering how being a Korean American coach has really helped you understand race better, and other relationships between race racial groups. And how through sports, it can be a platform to help build better relations, especially right now in the world that we’re living in, with racial tensions rising very high. And certainly you living in Portland where, Portland’s in the headlines these days. So with all the things going on around the country, any thoughts on that front?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah. First of all, I’m completely comfortable in saying that black lives matter. And not only that, I think there, I came across this statement recently, black lives are precious. In the literal translation in Korean is heuginui saengmyeongeun sojunghada, right. And my players, my former and current players, like my colleagues who are African American. Personally, for me as somebody who’s lived a sheltered, in terms of racial diversity, very sheltered life in Springfield, Eugene, Oregon, to going to a place like, the South Bronx and Harlem. I think about my former players. I think about the, how the school districts were so segregated. I think about the fact that I, I now have players who are parents and who are having to have conversations with their own children on how they need to behave when they get pulled over by a police officer. So I think we, especially, particularly those of us who live in that black and white world, and in that sense in basketball for me. You know, oftentimes I struggled to understand where my place is and I, I can’t say enough how crystallizing this time has been in terms of my mission to be a, be an ally, be a part of that bridge building.

 

Yeah. There, I mean, the relationships that I’ve had with my players are so precious and there’s such value. And if we don’t play our part in, in sharing the access that we have to better education, to jobs, and things that my students that I had the privilege of teaching, if we’re not doing our piece in doing that, I think we’re wasting a great opportunity. 

 

I, one of the most powerful statements, and maybe this is me trying not to answer the question. But, one of the most powerful statements I heard, I had the privilege professionally to be a part of a junior national team coaches pool that USA basketball has selected about 18 to 20 of us in the high school ranks. And again, it kind of runs that 50-50 split between the coaches that our, the racial makeup is, they’re white coaches and they’re African American coaches. And I am the lone Asian American coach in that pool. And again, it’s a visual reminder when you look at the Zoom screen and that’s it. And what, one of the talks that we were privileged to have was, we had General Martin Dempsey come and speak to the group. And he spoke about how, he was in the Middle East on one of his assignments and he was at a cafe somewhere and he’s with the Israeli general.

 

And he turns to General Dempsey and says, what makes a, you know what makes America great? And so General Dempsey says what? And he says, you guys have the dash. So what’s the dash? And he says, well, you have African Americans, you have Indian Americans, you have Asian, you have Korean Americans, you have, that the diversity of what, what our country has is the greatest asset. And so we live in that split as Korean Americans. We have that dash when we identify ourselves. And the other powerful thing that general Dempsey said during this time was, he said, people are feeling fearful a lot. The uncertainties are really hard. But belonging is the greatest antidote to fear. So where do we belong? Well, I, at least, Abe, the work that you’re leading, I belong in the tribe of Korean Americans. And I know that I have a, I have a place here.

 

I belong in the tribe of other basketball coaches who are trying to do right. You know, there’s these different tribes that I’m a part of that makes me feel less lonely, less alone in this journey. So I don’t know if I really answered your question, but those are the things that I find myself during this COVID time that I’m hanging on to. You know, that I have a purpose holding that dash, and that’s a privilege. And that my work is in trying to make sure that people who come across my path walk away feeling like they belong to somewhere or something.

 

Abe Kim:

Well, you’re, I know you’re doing some work to help be a role model and help other Korean Americans who are entering into the basketball world as a coach or a player. Share with us some of the work that you’re doing right now to help Korean Americans in the basketball world. 

 

Marshall Cho:

So when, again, when Steve and I had the privilege of being a part of this summit, the CKA summit. You know, one of the things that you challenged us with as we were leaving and handing us a challenge coin was, you know, right. So, to be challenged by that experience, to gain knowledge about maybe a space that I’m not aware of, and then really the, a part, I think we have to have a bias for action. So I, for the longest time I thought about, you know, I have, I do over the years have collected a handful of relationships and friendships of others who are in the basketball world.

 

And so we commiserate, we encourage each other. But at the same time, I think really it’s the, the power is in the younger generations. So there’s a young man that I came across, Daniel Chun, a recent, somewhat recent grad of USC. He started an initiative to start a basketball team called Kimchi Express. So they, it started as a group of Koreans and pretty soon found out that, just with Korean American players, the losses are stacking up. It’s evolved over years. And now it’s a team that’s trying to make this tournament called the TBT, the basketball tournament where the prize at the end of it is $2 million or a million dollars. And so what he started to do was he started a group called, an endeavor called Kimchi Family. And just, again, it’s to bring awareness of what Koreans are doing in the sports world.

 

So in terms of the space that I occupy in basketball, I wanted to highlight, I wanted to really elevate and empower my peers who aren’t by nature self promoters, or we’re generally humble as Asian Americans, but had done some really special things. So the first talk that we have, again, I want it to be action-minded as you challenged us to do. So we have a Zoom call coming up this Thursday, and it will be Jonathan Yim, who is a current assistant coach video coordinator for the Portland Trail Blazers, who has an amazing story of his own to tell. But again, it’s putting these amazing guys who have sacrificed so much to get to where they are, for them to share their stories and hopefully encourage somebody else out there. So excited about that, and hopefully it can build into something that’s organic and powerful.

 

Abe Kim:

Well, you’ve been very generous with your time, as well as opening up your life to us. And I’d like to conclude our interview with one final question which is, if you could speak to your 19-year-old self, what would you advise that young Marshall Cho about life looking back from where you are now?

 

Marshall Cho:

Yeah, I would just say, be honest with yourself. And again, maybe, a lot of these types of questions I don’t want to, I don’t want to do anything different because I really love the life that I have today. So perhaps it, if I went into coaching right away. Or if I won at 19 years old, I joined the University of Oregon team and became a student manager and, and had this, you know, that rise, that’s like maybe like Erik Spoelstra, who is the head coach of the Heat. Started in the video room and, and worked my way up, maybe I would be at a different place. But I’m really thankful for the life that I have today. Even though it’s, again, a script that I could not have written at 19. But ultimately I think what, for myself at 19 or any other 19 year olds that I mentored today, I think truth bears no question. You know, I think if you’re truthful with who you are and what you’re gifted at, and you have people who are willing to tell you that to your face, I think it would serve a lot of us well.

 

Abe Kim:

Well, wonderful. Thank you very much. What a great end to a great interview. So thank you for your time, your life, your wisdom, and for all the young lives that you’ve invested in. Obviously you’re still young, so you’ve got many more lives to invest in as well, but thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Marshall. 

 

Marshall Cho:

Appreciate it. Thank you.