Neither could have imagined they’d work together again. Especially not for a pro women's volleyball team in America.
But Misao Tanioka and LOVB Salt Lake coach Tama Miyashiro are reunited.
The path Misao took to become the trainer for LOVB Salt Lake has hardly been direct. She's been all over the world, from her home in Japan, to Canada, to America, to China and wherever there was snow, back to Tokyo, and now Salt Lake City.
Misao, now 47, got her undergraduate degree and left Tokyo at 22, "knowing I wanted my career in sports medicine.” And that she wanted to cross the Pacific to do so.
“Comparing the U.S. and Japan, the U.S. wins medals. Sports are strong and the systems around them are already established and set up. I knew right away I had to go to the United States."
However, her first move was to Canada where she learned English – which is impeccable – and then to Omaha for her master's at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. After graduation, Misao spent 12 years in Ohio at Miami University, where she worked a lot of sports, including volleyball, soccer and swimming.
"I knew my strengths lay in those sports," said Misao, who swam and played a little volleyball as a kid.
"When I got my green card (in 2014), I knew I could leave and go wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted to do. I wanted to work with elite athletes. I was ready to make a step up."
She applied for several positions and got a seasonal training position with USA Volleyball (USAV). So, a year before the Rio Olympics, she moved to Anaheim.
One of the players in the USA gym was libero Tama Miyashiro, the former Washington star who joined the USA program in 2010 and was battling an injury that summer.
"I spent a lot of time treating her," Misao recalled. "Being with USA Volleyball, that opened a lot of doors for me."
"In the national team gym, she took care of all of us," Tama said. "I stayed in touch with her and knew (LOVB Salt Lake) had to get her. I love Misao. And we also bond due to our Japanese heritage."
Tama grew up in Hawai'i but her family comes from Japan.
"She's a really good trainer," Tama continued. "I like her balance, mixing in the strictness of Japanese culture. When I was working on my knee, it was really nice to have someone like that, who could be objective but caring. That's the best thing about Misao."
In 2015, Misao got a call from Kevin Hambly, then-head coach at Illinois. He was familiar with Misao’s work in the USAV gym and offered her a job. That’s where she first met LOVB Salt Lake setter Olympian Jordyn Poulter, then a sophomore for the Illini.
"I love her so much," Jordyn exclaimed. "I feel so grateful to have her again."
The feeling is mutual.
"I’m so thankful our paths have crossed again," Misao said.
Jordyn recalled the way Misao treated her for an injured hamstring at Illinois.
"She took care of me and my teammates and had such a good feel for athletes' bodies. And she just cares about them as people and humans. You can feel that every time you're in the training room with her."
Kevin left for Stanford in 2017 and his replacement asked Misao to stay, but she got another call from one of those USAV connections, men’s indoor Olympian Reid Priddy.
Priddy, making the move to the beach, offered her a spot "doing nutrition, doing training, doing medicine, you can do everything. You're gonna be my person," she recalled. "I became his person and did one tour with the AVP."
After that, Misao went to a performance recovery facility when a national team from China came calling. Not in volleyball, but in halfpipe skiing of all things.
"It was a completely different gig," she said with a smile. "This let me meet completely new people and took me to a new part of the world and a different sport."
Most of the job was spent "chasing the snow, we were chasing the winter, three months in New Zealand, three months in Finland, then three months all over the place, in the U.S., Canada, China. For those two, three years I lived out of a suitcase and in hotels."
That job ended during COVID, so she returned to Japan to be with family.
"Since I didn't have a career in Japan and didn't know anybody, I tried to make connections. A friend of a friend (in Japan) was looking for a trainer in basketball."
That led to another gig with a pro team — the Toyota Boshoku Sunshine Rabbits — near Nagoya. That lasted a year.
"I had to come back to the States (to keep her green card) and went to Colorado and got a clinic job to settle and not travel around."
But last year, coach Tama -- "my good friend for many, many years" – called with a job offer that Misao was glad to accept.
"The biggest reason I took this job was Tama. As soon as she signed with League One, she called me and said, 'Hey, the next thing they're looking for is the medical. Are you interested?' That was a no-brainer. Knowing Tama as a person and knowing Tama as a coach from working together in the past, I knew this is going to be a good gig."
As Jordyn notes, "[Misao’s] at the point in her career where she can choose her situation and so she wants to check all the boxes and having athletes she respects and knows helped in some of that decision for her."
About a month in, Misao said things are going better than imagined.
"Overall, the staff, the athletes, I could not have asked for better," she said. "Even Club V hosting us, everything is clicking really well."
Jordyn joked that she's only recently admitted to herself that she's a "veteran athlete" until the past year. Accordingly, she needs Misao.
"A lot of us see her almost every day." Jordyn said. "Our off days, our recovery days, she's taken the time to create space for all of us athletes and she's just someone who has put the dedication, love and care into her craft. It shows how she treats her athletes."
