Masaaki Naosaki was the assistant coach of the York men's gymnastics team from 1972 to 1993 and was part of the coaching staff for numerous provincial and national championships. A three-time CIAU coach of the year award winner (1981, 1982 and 1986), Naosaki helped guide the squad to 21 OUAA gold medals and 18 CIAU gold medals. In addition to coaching at York, Naosaki also represented Canada at numerous international events. He was the head coach of the men's gymnastics team at the Olympic Games in 1988 and 1992, the Commonwealth Games in 1981, the World University Games in 1985 and 1987 and the Pan American Games in 1979 and 1999. He was also the head coach of the Canadian men's world championship gymnastics team 12 times and the Pacific Alliance Championships team three times. In 1988, Naosaki became the first gymnastics coach to win the Coaching Association of Canada Excellence Award.
York University has Brian McVey to thank for Masaaki Naosaki.
McVey is the man who introduced Naosaki to York head gymnastics coach Tom Zivic in the early 1970s, and Zivic offered Naosaki a position as an assistant coach with the Yeomen gymnastics team.
The rest is history.
A two-year plan to stay in Canada turned into a lifetime as Naosaki coached the men’s gymnastics team at York for 22 years.
“It was a great opportunity for me,” Naosaki says about his decision to stay in Canada and work with Zivic, a York Sport Hall of Fame inductee in 1983. “I realized this was my place to enhance what I wanted to do and I stayed because I enjoyed it so much.”
Together, Naosaki and Zivic created a dynasty. The Yeomen won dozens of OUAA and CIAU individual and team gold medals under their guidance and, along the way, Naosaki earned the CIAU coach of the year award three times.
In addition to coaching the Yeomen, Naosaki was a regular at international events with Canada’s men’s gymnastics team. After being selected as one of the subjects for Ken Danby’s Olympic portraits, Naosaki would go on to enjoy an international career spanning nearly three decades. From the late ‘70s to the early ‘90s, he was the head coach for two Olympic Games, World University Games and Pan American Games, one Commonwealth Games and 12 world championships, and in 1988 he became the first gymnastics coach to win the Coaching Association of Canada Excellence Award.
York’s gymnastics program not only benefitted from Naosaki’s expertise and technical knowledge, but also simply from his presence. His vast international experience helped make York the place to be for male gymnasts hoping to reach the highest level of the sport, and often several members of the Canadian team were also Yeomen.
Despite the continued success on the gymnastics floor, what was most important to the coaches was excellence in the classroom.
“Tom and I had the same philosophy, that education was the most important thing, and we stressed that to our athletes. It makes me so happy to see that so many of them graduated from York and have gone on to be successful in what they’ve chosen to do.”
And, perhaps, that stands as his greatest legacy – helping prepare his student-athletes not only for the next gymnastics meet but also for what came after graduation. Naosaki’s athletes have become successful professionals in their respective chosen fields, using the skills they developed under Naosaki’s guidance while they were Yeomen. And while his primary job at York was to teach men the technical intricacies of the skills they performed, Naosaki was always aware of the bigger role he played.
“Coaches are not just teaching sport skills, they are also teaching life skills. I like to see people succeed in any area, not just sport, and I continued [for all these years] because of the ability to influence people for a better life.”
The hundreds of gymnasts who experienced success in athletics, academics and their chosen careers will no doubt agree that Naosaki did just that.
