Teaching Basketball, the Power of Relationships, and Lessons Learned from an Incredible Basketball Coaching Journey with Marshall Cho

On this episode, host Justin Hong interviews basketball coach Marshall Cho about his story and coaching journey.

Marshall talks about his family background, immigrating from South Korea to Oregon as a child, and how he first fell in love with basketball (3:07), his playing career and breaking stereotypes as a 3-sport varsity athlete & team captain (5:09), and starting his career off as an educator with Teach for America (11:00).

He also discusses the power of relationships (17:14), his early experiences with coaching basketball, including teaching basketball while living in Mozambique (21:12), and landing basketball coaching opportunities back in the US - first at DeMatha Catholic High School in Maryland as an assistant coach and then eventually Lake Oswego High School in Oregon as the head boys basketball coach (35:51).

(Listener note: at the time of the recording of this interview, Marshall was the head boys basketball coach at Lake Oswego High School; he has recently resigned from this position to pursue new challenges and help grow the game of basketball in Oregon and abroad. Best wishes, Marshall!)

He shares his long-term coaching aspirations (50:38), his experience as an Asian American basketball coach (53:35), seeing more Asian Americans entering the world of coaching and honoring the Asian American coaches who came before him (56:14), and advice for up and coming Asian American coaches (58:50) and basketball players (1:03:20), and much more.  

Coach Marshall Cho - USA Basketball

Please help support this podcast by:

• Rating & reviewing the show on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to this podcast
• Subscribing to this podcast so that you know when the next episode is ready
• Following the show's Instagram page @theasianamericanathlete

Thank you for listening to the show!