Ken Smith was a star college water polo player and then went on to become arguably the greatest water polo coach in the history of the sport in Hawai’i. During his four years at UCLA under coach Bob Horn, Smith started every game and was a two-time All-American. His college teams went undefeated, 65–0. He served as a graduate coaching assistant for Horn in 1969, the first year of college water polo’s NCAA era. UCLA won the NCAA championship that year with - among other great players - future Hall of Famers Eric Lindroth and Jim Ferguson. Smith received a master’s degree in physical education from UCLA, hoping to get a job as a water polo coach at a Southern California community college. Instead, he accepted a position as the water polo coach and a fifth-grade science and math teacher at Punahou. He subsequently became an intermediate school physical education teacher at Punahou.
Under Ken’s leadership, Punahou became a nationally recognized program. Ken’s teams were known for their excellent goaltending, strong counterattack, and pressure defense. He coached the boys’ program from 1973 to 2018, amassing a total of forty ILH titles in forty-five years. Ken was a key figure in starting the girls’ water polo program in 1997 when it first became an ILH sport. Although he has since retired from teaching after forty years, Ken remains the head coach of the girls’ team today and led them to win thirteen consecutive ILH and State Championships. In 2022, he celebrated fifty years of coaching at Punahou.
Under Ken’s tutelage, his players have gone on to join the USA Olympic Water Polo team in six straight Olympics spanning a twenty-year period. Some of these players include Chris Duplanty, a NCAA Champion, three-time All-American, three-time Olympian, and USA Water Polo Hall of Famer; Sean Kern, a two-time NCAA Champion, four-time All-American, two-time NCAA Player of the Year, and an Olympian; and Brandon Brooks, a two-time NCAA Champion, four-time All-American, and two-time Olympian. Most recently, yet another former player, Aaron Chaney, who won a National championship with UC Santa Barbara in 1979, and later became a referee in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, was inducted into the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame as an official in 2023. Ken’s impressive career in water polo is a testament to his dedication as a mentor and an inspiration to guiding and educating Hawai’i’s student-athletes.
