In a nutshell, Kamehameha last night looked like a football team in midseason, or even postseason, form. Kahuku, on the other hand, looked like a team in its third week of practice.
Some obsevations:
• Ryan Ho supposedly runs a 4.6 in the 40-yard dash, but looked like a 4.4 guy when he took the swing pass from Edmund Kamano Jr. in the right side flat, found a seam, shot through it and then outraced everybody to the end zone.
“He’s got great game speed,” Warriors coach David Stant said.
Ho showed his wheels again in the second quarter after a punt snap went over his head and into the end zone, he picked it up and turned it into a 15-yard gain for a first down. He later had a 71-yard TD run in the fourth quarter.
• Kamehameha has great overall team speed. Kamano has good feet at QB, scrambling nicely before a 27-yard TD throw to Rylee Urasaki. Beau Yap has great burst coming off the edge at DE.
All game, the Warriors just seemed one step quicker than the Red Raiders.
• Kahuku’s O-line needs to grow up in a hurry. There’s three sophomores there, but they’re learning the hard way that varsity game speed is a notch higher than JV. People can complain about play calling, but running the ball has always been the Red Raiders’ bread-and-butter. St. John Lessary III is a smooth-running halfback, but he needs holes to run through.
• Kamano was throwing darts and hitting bullseyes. I like his accuracy and zip on the ball.
• Kahuku quarterbacks need work. Torres said the starting job is up for grabs, “but all of them struggled” last night. At least one is going to have to step it up in a hurry. In the meantime, I would forget the long and difficult routes and go more for high percentage passes that will build their confidence.
I’d also try to get Lessary the ball on screens or swing passes to take advantage of his open-field running ability.
• One explanation for the disparity in execution: School started for Kahuku in late July, same week as the start of practice. That means no “two-a-day” workouts.
Kamehameha, meanwhile, recently held “THREE-a-day” workouts for an entire week since school was not in session. All those reps have got to pay off quickly.
“The three-a-days were rough, but the outcome was good,” Ho said.
The Warriors looked like they were in midseason shape, with explosiveness and spring in their step.
• The one area Kamehameha must correct immediately is penalties. It’s not just the nine flags for 104 yards; it’s the timing. Many came on third down for Kahuku, bailing the Red Raiders out. Can’t be doing that against good teams.
But other than that, the Warriors looked very sharp. Kahuku did not look good at all, but it’s early and I wouldn’t push the panic button yet.
The learning curve will be steep, especially for those sophomore linemen, so I think you’ll see a different Red Raiders team emerge week by week.
No matter what happens tonight — the First Friday of the high school football season — I already give the “Offseason Award” to Kahuku.
You can lift all the weights, run all the sprints, attend all the camps, but if you don’t have team chemistry and harmony, it will be tough to have a successful season. Just ask last year’s Red Raiders.
Some of those guys are returning, which probably is why they took concrete steps in the offseason to find preventative measures to the problems that surfaced in 2007. So far, it looks like they did.
A “leadership committee,” made up of one representative from each position group (receivers, linebackers, running backs, etc.), will now serve as liaison to Coach Torres should any issues come up. That shouldn’t happen often, since Torres and the committee already has sat down to go over team policy and rules for this season.
Torres’ rules were at the center of much debate last year, including on this blog.
But guess what? This year’s team actually agreed to keep almost all the rules intact, including two of the more controversial ones: on-field celebrations and eating lunch together every day on campus.
Torres and the committee also reached compromise on another of last year’s disputes: how to approach “preseason” games.
Some players and parents objected when Torres pulled starters in the fourth quarter of a close game at Utah, which Kahuku eventually lost. Torres said the Red Raiders will enter tonight’s opener against Kamehameha with the idea of going for the win, but the players agreed that substitutions will be necessary so the coaching staff can evaluate game performance.
“We still have guys battling for starting jobs at several positions,” Torres said. “We have to be able to evaluate them under game conditions.”
To listen to leadership committee member Jray Galeai on Wednesday, the players support Torres “100 percent.”
As Galeai said, “everything is on our shoulders,” since this time they were involved in the decision-making process from the beginning. That should quiet at least some of the parents/critics who have been quick to blame Torres for everything short of global warming.
Meanwhile, the team seems to be bonding nicely with all the rules in place. There’s already been one “talent show” to break the monotony of fall practice and another one is likely on tap soon.
This year’s group of Red Raiders seems younger and physically smaller than recent versions. Torres said three sophmores are slated to start on the offensive line tonight. Galeai, last year’s starting quarterback, has moved to defensive back where he will play in college and Allan Kubota has been handed the keys to the offense, for now.
We’ll be watching closely what happens on the field, starting tonight.
And hopefully, that is where the focus will stay throughout the season.
Friday afternoon took us to Kaimuki, another place casual observers might not associate with big-time high school football. But second-year head coach Darren Johnson — knows as “D.J.” in the football community — won’t settle for anything less than top-notch competition.
He didn’t waste any time making his mark in his debut season, guiding the Bulldogs to the OIA White Conference championship. That feat helped Kaimuki earn a promotion to the OIA Red, and D.J. says that is exactly where he and the players want to be.
The key to surviving and competing in the Red, of course, is depth. You are literally playing with the big boys now, and there is a weekly pounding to endure when the schedule includes Kahuku, Farrington, Kailua.
But Johnson is no stranger to that, having played for Kahuku in the early 1980s and coached at Kahuku and Kailua in the 1990s and early 2000s. So he has built the numbers, with over 50 on this year’s roster. And a lot of these guys have the physical size to match up with the Kahukus and Farringtons.
Unlike Damien and Kalani, Kaimuki traditionally has almost always had a deep pool of size and talent walking around campus. It’s often just a matter of getting all those athletes academically eligible and motivated to come out for football.
Two years ago, the Bulldogs had only 26 players on their roster but were only a field goal away from advancing to the Division II state semifinals. That’s the kind of talent they have.
This year’s group looks just as talented, with some depth to boot.
Knowing Johnson’s competitive nature, do not expect Kaimuki to be just an accidental tourist in the Red Conference. These guys have the potential to contend right away and be a fixture in the Red for a while.
There was a question raised on another Advertiser blog whether Sen. Barack Obama — pictured flashing a shaka to the crowd at Ke‘ehi Lagoon last Friday — was truly “local … or trying to be?”
It raised quite a debate, but I have to admit, when I attended Obama’s CNN interview live in Chicago about two weeks ago I watched very closely for any signs that might reveal him as a “local boy.” I found almost none, even after I gave him an “Aloha, Senator!” greeting while shaking his hand (and wearing an Advertiser aloha shirt) as he made his way down the crowded line of well-wishers immediately after the program.
He did show some laid-back aloha to the lady before me, who asked for an autograph. Obama said, “Yeah, sure, just give (the notepad) to him (secret service guy) with your name on it and I’ll sign it back there (backstage).” And to be fair, he did admit during the interview that he was exhausted from having just returned from an eight-day overseas trip.
But without having much other observation to go on (and having not read his book yet), I can see how somebody might wonder if the question of Obama’s “localness” might be legitimate before he arrived here six days ago.
Since then, however, I think he has erased all doubt. And to me, the clincher was when he went back to Punahou on Tuesday morning to play some basketball with former classmates. It doesn’t get much more real than that, coming home from the Mainland for a visit, calling up “da boyz” to go play hoops and hang out. My friends and I have all been there.
But really, Obama’s status as a “local boy” was sealed almost 30 years ago, having attended Punahou since fifth grade and graduating in 1979. Among many other things, he has priceless memories and a basketball state championship medal to prove he is as local as just about everybody else.
That Buffanblu team his senior year would have to be considered one of the all-time greats, beating Moanalua (and sophomore sensation Sam Johnson) 60-28 in the state title game. Punahou was loaded, with three Division I athletes in the starting lineup. Darryl Gabriel was a sharpshooting All-State guard who would go on to play at Santa Rosa Junior College and Loyola Marymount.
Sophomore center Dan Hale made first-team All-State and went on to play at UH and Chaminade. Junior forward John Kamana is regarded as one of the best all-around athletes of his generation, an All-Star basketball player who later was in the same USC starting lineup as Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Allen.
Obama, meanwhile, did not start but reportedly was a contributor off the bench. It no doubt was tough to crack that lineup.
The title actually started a dynasty, as the Buffanblu went on to repeat in 1980 against another legendary team from University High (Leroy Lutu, Eric and Evans Morales) and then three-peated in 1981 against yet another great team from Maryknoll (Francis Fletcher, Blaise Villa, Ricky Leong).
Given the level of competition during those years (Hilo had Reed Sunahara, Rene Sanchez; Castle had Jeff Hiro, Alvis Satele, Aui Fitasimanu), Punahou’s three-peat was especially impressive.
Anyway, back to Obama, I’m sure he has vivid memories of those days as well and some of those names might have come up in between games Tuesday when he and his buddies talked story.
Along with going to Zippy’s and Rainbow’s, wearing rubbah slippahs to the movies, playing golf at Olomana, enjoying some grinds with family under a tree at Magic Island and going Grandma’s house, it’s what local boys do when they come home from the Mainland.
And watching Obama take the stage at Ke‘ehi Lagoon with an uncontrolled huge smile as he gave Mufi Hannemann an enthusiastic handshake and hug, it was immediately clear this was a different guy from the one I saw up close two weeks ago in Chicago. This was a local boy who was so happy and comfortable to finally be home.
I know that look, I’ve seen it before and even had it on my own face several times in the past.
So to answer the question … yeah, I would say he’s local.
Next on the preseason football tour, last Wednesday afternoon, was Kalani.
Now, let’s be honest, it’s no secret Kalani probably is the most “football-challenged” program on O‘ahu, for many reasons. This year’s team has only 25 players, not many of whom might be considered ultra-talented or imposing physical specimens.
Falcons coach Greg Taguchi admits it will be a matter of “survival” to get through this season, which has been the case several times before.
I stayed and watched about 20 minutes of Kalani’s practice that day, just to get a sense of what Taguchi has to work with. Let me first say I give him and his staff a lot of credit for their time and effort. I discussed with a colleague what challenges the program faces and what it would take to make it competitive.
Here’s what I/we came up with:
Challenges:
• Love of football, or lack thereof. Yes, Kalani’s enrollment is smaller than most public schools, but other schools of similar or even smaller enrollments have managed to draw bigger turnouts and better athletes from the campus population. Somehow, being a football player at Kalani is not quite the big deal it is at most other schools.
The school’s district includes many kids from middle/upper middle class backgrounds, with many other options (car, surfboard, Kahala Mall) to keep them occupied. Why run sprints and sweat like a pig in full pads when you can hop in a car and cruise Sandy Beach with your girlfriend instead?
Football just does not have the significant role on the Kalani campus or in the community like it does at other places.
• Lack of football tradition. Obviously there is no trophy case full of past titles or deep folklore of many great games or moments from Kalani’s 45-years-plus history. Other than Cal Lee and Roy Gerela, there aren’t many football “legends” today’s Falcons can look up to and aspire to follow.
As mentioned in the previous blog about Damien, tradition alone doesn’t win games, but slipping on that school jersey and helmet needs to mean something special to the kids, and unfortunately the draw of that feeling seems to be missing from Kalani.
• Private school push/pull: Because of the socio-economic dynamic of Kalani’s district, a disproportionate amount of kids in that area attend private high schools. That includes many top athletes, potential football players. Almost every public school loses potential athletes this way, but Kalani probably is affected more than most.
• Physical makeup: Without getting into reasons why, there just aren’t a lot of 6-foot, 200-pound boys among Kalani’s student body. Size isn’t everything in football, but there often comes a point when, as Coach Larry Price liked to say, “Physical superiority cancels all theory.”
So, what can Kalani do? Basically, as with other challenges in life, you try to control the things you can control:
• Lack of interest: For the 25 players you do have, build a culture of positive experiences and unity. As Waipahu coach Sean Saturnio said, the best salesmen are the players themselves. If they are having fun and feeling good about being part of the team, others will hear about it and some will want to give it a try themselves next year.
We tend to measure success by wins and losses, but daily/weekly progress can result in season-long improvement and a rewarding overall experience. Same goes for team bonding.
• Tradition. You cannot change the past, so if there is no existing rich tradition, you have to work to create one. Damien has the Purple Line. De La Salle has the Thursday night team dinner. UH has the Warrior Club. Tradition doesn’t just come from trophies or a history of all-stars.
• Attention to detail. Things like size and speed and talent might be out of your control. But things like conditioning, fundamentals, technique and mental mistakes often ARE within your control.
I watched Kalani practice their punt/punt coverage that day. It starts with the long snap. You don’t have to have Division I size or talent to make a clean, crisp and accurate long snap. It just takes good technique and lots of repetition, maybe an extra 5 or 10 minutes of extra work after practice every day.
Same with punting. Practice on your own on Sundays, if you have to.
Teams like De La Salle, Waimea, ‘Iolani did not win all their championships with the most talented or biggest football players. Their diligent attention to conditioning, weight training, technique and discipline helped them overcome some disadvantages.
Kalani might be punting a lot this season, but if they can get clean snaps and punts off with hangtime and distance, it might at least help with field position. At the very least, they won’t be giving away “gift” touchdowns with snaps over the punter’s head or on the ground.
• Building from JV. Taguchi appears to be on to this, as Kalani has 40 on the JV squad. The challenge is in keeping those 40 interested and committed to advancing to the varsity.
See above.
No question, Kalani has big challenges every year and it is not easy to build a competitive football program there. Many have tried.
But I like to think that it is not impossible. There were teams in the 1980s that won a few games, held their own — and that was before the White and Blue Divisions were created.
The Falcons don’t have to play Kahuku and Farrington anymore, so I would think there is reason to believe they can someday be competitive at least in the White.
It shouldn’t have to be just a matter of “survival” every year.
Wednesday morning was Damien’s turn, again just a short trip down from my old neighborhood. Other people may not think of Damien as a “football school,” but whenever I stroll down to that 80-yard football field tucked away in urban Kalihi, I think of all the Monarch greats that trekked on that grass donning the purple and white.
Joe Hisatake, who nearly became the ILH’s first 1,000-yard rusher … Charlie Aiu … the Maunupau brothers (Henry, Rockne, Patrick) … Joey DeSa … Harold DeMello … Reagan Ka‘anoi … Todd Schmidt … Chad Kurashige … Punahou Aina … Chris Truby … Eddie Klaneski … Chris Brown … and, most recently, Kealoha Pilares and Kama Bailey.
Of course, there are others, but I’m just throwing out some examples (so no get mad!).
Damien’s tradition also includes the “Purple Line,” a stripe on the driveway leading to the field where the players gather before every practice to focus on the task at hand, say a prayer or even sing the school song. It gets repainted by the seniors every year before the season’s first game.
“We’re going to do it again next week,” said new-old head coach Wally Aina, who could be considered a Damien great himself after serving the school in various leadership capacities the past three decades.
By the way, Damien has a couple other football legends among its former head coaches: Don “Spud” Botelho and Charlie Ane.
Of course, tradition can only take you so far and you cannot win this year’s games with players and coaches from the past. But at the same time, I think it would be invaluable if this year’s players fully understand their school’s football history and take complete pride in Damien’s tradition whenever slipping on that purple and gold jerseys and helmet.
This one, I would have to say, was too close for comfort.
The BOE voted late last night (11:55 p.m.) to basically protect public school athletics — essentially JV sports — from a proposed $1 million in budget cuts for the 2009-2010 school year. The vote came only after almost four hours of testimony and some quarreling over the fairness and wording of member John Penebacker’s motion to amend Breene Harimoto’s motion to remand the DOE’s proposed budget cuts.
It was a rather bold move by Penebacker, aggressively and specifically labeling athletics (and other smaller-budget programs) as exempt from the budget axe. Chairperson Donna Ikeda called it “creating sacred cows.”
The amended motion passed by a vote of seven to four, much to Ikeda’s chagrin, but I think she did make her point that “everything should be looked at” since “none of the programs are less valuable than others” to those who support them.
Sports got spared this time, but you can only get a pass so many times before it’s your turn to take a hit.
Last night’s vote really only bought JV athletics some time, a year to be exact.
I believe in the next 12 months, our sports leaders and supporters are going to have to step it up even more and generate more revenue to prepare for the next round of cuts, when athletics may not be so lucky to avoid being hit.
As State Rep. James Tokioka said in reference to relying on the legislature to bail out athletics, “That’s a game of Russian roulette I wouldn’t want to play.”
We all can breathe a sigh of relief today.
But we better start thinking of money solutions tomorrow.
Today (Tuesday) our annual preseason picture-taking tour took us to Farrington. It’s a visit I always look forward to, since it’s just a short trip down the hill from my parents’ house, where I grew up.
My dad used to hit me fly balls on that football field, and he taught me how to bat left-handed on the adjacent grassy area behind the old asphalt basketball courts. Oh and yeah, he even made me take laps around the dirt track when I wasn’t paying attention.
Anyway, still good memories there.
Now, back to football, and unfortunately, a reminder again of what seems to be an almost annual problem at Farrington: academic probation.
Head coach Randall Okimoto doesn’t have the exact number yet, but he again expects a significant portion of his team to be hit by AP. The problem used to be worse, just a few years ago when Farrington was on a traditional calendar and the first day of school was after the season opener.
Now with school starting last week, there is time for these “probies” to get their grades straightened out in time for the regular season.
But it’s too bad this catch-up game has to be played at all.
The problem, Okimoto said, comes from the spring semester, when many of the players are not participating in a sport. There’s no meaningful consequence for slipping below the 2.0 mark or receiving a failing grade, so kids tend to take their schoolwork less seriously.
I don’t blame Okimoto, because I know he’s tried to keep them on track, and for obvious reasons he wants them to be eligible. And it’s not a problem unique to Farrington. A couple months ago, I talked to a vice principal (who also is a former coach) about similar problems at his school, and he said it’s not an easy thing to fix because there’s only so much the coaches and school can do.
At some point, the kid has to do the work himself.
Parents need to do their part, too, making schoolwork a priority in the home. They should know the rules and understand that their son cannot play football if he is not academically eligible.
Now, hoping and assuming the Govs get their academic house in order, I see a lot of potential in this team. They’ve got a solid core of returnees at key positions, like defensive lineman VJ Fehoko, linebacker Isaiah Iuta, defensive back James Smith. Quarterback Dayton Kealoha has good genes: his dad, Walter, Jr., was Farrington’s quarterback in 1979.
The JV team made it to the OIA championship, so the guys who moved up already know how to win.
This varsity team certainly passes the “eye” test: big, strong, athletic.
Let’s just hope they all pass their classroom tests in the next couple weeks.
The best part about Parker McLachlin’s first PGA Tour victory, at least to me, is that it looks like it won’t be the only one he’ll earn before his career is over.
For one thing, at 29, McLachlin has youth on his side and his best golf probably is still ahead of him.
Also, he didn’t just win — he blew out the field by at least seven strokes. Granted, there was no Tiger Woods, no Phil Mickelson, no Vijay Singh to battle with; in fact, many of the Tour’s top players were not there.
Then again, I’m sure most of those top guys have played Montreaux Golf & Country Club at some point in their career and only two others ever shot as low as McLachlin’s course-record 62 on Friday. As if to prove it wasn’t a fluke, Parker followed that with a 66 on Saturday.
It’s one thing to shoot low, but it’s another to scramble and hold off challenges on Sunday, and McLachlin did both. Clearly, he was not in the same groove as Friday and Saturday, and there was a nervous stretch from holes 10 through 13 where it looked like victory was not a sure thing after all.
A bogey on 10, and then Brian Davis’ birdie-from-the-bunker on 11, quickly cut the six-stroke lead to four.
Then on 12, McLachlin pushed his tee shot into the trees on the right, and the ball landed on a scraggly patch short and right of the par-3 green. He made a nice punch shot to about 15 feet, then sank the putt to save par.
On 13, McLachlin found trouble again, landing in the rough and then a greenside bunker. But he made what the TV announcer called an “all-world” sand save as Davis missed his birdie putt. They called it a “two-shot” swing that might have otherwise cut the lead to two strokes with five holes to play.
Later, one of the TV guys said McLachlin’s final round featured several “gut checks that he passed with flying colors.”
I agree.
It was a well-earned victory, and showed he is capable of more.
Just got through watching the 1980s classic movie “Big” on AMC, starring Tom Hanks as Josh Baskin, a 13-year-old suddenly stuck in the body of a grown-up thrust into the world of corporate America.
Josh amazingly zooms up the corporate ladder of a toy company, largely because unlike the adult workers around him, he is able to see the products through the eyes of a kid. After all, he IS a kid.
He quickly enjoys some of the advantages of being a grown-up — having money to spend, getting your own apartment, landing an adult girlfriend. But he also learns about other adult realities — including having to produce a product that will sell, the pressures of meeting deadlines and having to put work above play and your friends.
He visits a neighborhood much like his own, watches kids playing in a pile of fall leaves, a middle school class taking their yearbook picture on the lawn, boys playing baseball at the park.
Josh decides he wants to go back to being a kid again, and — unlike us — he is able to do that thanks to the “Zoltar” machine that turned him into a grown-up to begin with.
Unfortunately, there’s no Zoltar machine I know of that can do that in real life, but the closest thing I know of is sports. There’s something magical about a ballpark, a football field, a basketball court that makes me suddenly feel like a kid again.
I had the ultimate “big kid” experience twice last week, finally fulfilling a dream to watch a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field. It was kind of exciting figuring out how we would get tickets, then finally getting them and walking into hurriedly into the ballpark to join the masses.
Wrigley Field is like an adult Disneyland — gotta be one of the happiest places on Earth. Everybody seems thrilled to be there, seems to check all their adult problems at the door. We (38,000 of us) cheered at every opportunity, we munched on peanuts and hot dogs, we all stood and sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch.
For three hours, we all could be 13 years old again. In the middle of the game, I even busted out the lines immortalized by Ferris Bueller: “Sah-Wing! Battah-battah-battah-battah-battah, Sah-Wing, battah!” Then I turned to my friend sitting to me and said, “Do you realize if we played by the rules, we’d be in gym class right now?”
Sigh.
We can’t be 13 years old, or 15 or 17, forever, but we have sports outlets here in Hawai‘i that can briefly help us recapture some of those care-free feelings of youth. When I’m at a high school football game, I somehow feel younger. When I hear those bands playing the alma maters and fight songs, I sometimes drift back to those dreamy days when we laughed and played and had the world laid out in front of us for the taking.
It’s a good place to be.
Friday, Aug. 15, Kahuku vs. Kamehameha at Aloha Stadium.
