Damien’s Akila Arecchi relies on hard work and athleticism to achieve success

The comparison is impossible to ignore.

Damien’s Akila Arecchi does it all for the Monarchs. He catches passes — 19 of them for 401 yards and five touchdowns this season, to be exact.

He runs the ball — 63 times in his three-year varsity career for 212 yards and three touchdowns.

He’s thrown for a touchdown, returned a kickoff to the house, and oh yeah, he’s been a full-time starter at defensive back this year with a pick-6 on his résumé.

The do-everything senior does all of this at 5 feet 6 and 150 pounds dripping wet. His favorite piece of advice is, “Size don’t matter. It’s all about how hard you work.”

Coach who can relate

If he ever begins to doubt himself for even a second, he has a coach at Damien who knows a little bit about exactly what Arecchi is trying to accomplish.

“Yeah, people have been kind of trying to compare him to me and stuff like that because obviously we play on both sides of the ball and we’re undersized,” said Damien coach Eddie Klaneski, who as a 5-foot-8 walk-on at UH became a two-time All-Western Athletic Conference defensive back for the Rainbows.

“Probably the closest comparison is I hated coming out of the game,” Klaneski said. “I enjoyed playing both ways and I never wanted to come out, and his mind-set is very similar to how I was in high school. He never wants to come out.”

It’s also tough for Klaneski to take him out. The Monarchs started the season low in numbers in their secondary, and Arecchi was the obvious choice to fill in.

Through six games, Damien (5-1, 3-0 ILH Division II) has allowed 14.5 points per contest. With two wins over Division I teams and a come-from-behind victory over St. Francis on Friday, the Monarchs are ranked in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser Top 10 for the first time in 14 years.

“(Our) senior class is pretty loaded and we’ve been together for a long time,” Arecchi said. “We only have one thing on our mind and that’s winning it all.”

Klaneski takes over

Six years ago, when Klaneski took over at his alma mater, the Monarchs had gone 0-10 the previous season and scored just 38 points.

Damien lost 25 games in a row from 2009 to 2011. Arecchi was at Saint Louis for sixth grade but came to Damien as a seventh-grader the following year, when Damien broke the streak with a 31-0 win over Kalaheo.

Fast forward five years and Damien is the two-time defending ILH Division II champion. Even with longtime kingpin ‘Iolani back in the same division after playing up the last two years, the Monarchs are still the favorites. They ended a 16-game losing streak to the Raiders last month.

“I just feel like this is the most leadership we’ve had with a group of seniors and Akila is part of that,” Klaneski said. “I think they get a little more respect from the younger kids, and it could be because we’ve put them through our program from the intermediate level. This is our first class that went all the way through up to their senior years, and so it’s special in a sense with this group. They’ve been awesome.”

One of four boys growing up in the Arecchi household, Akila makes the drive to school from Haleiwa each morning with his younger brother.

Multi-talented

He’s also a standout on the defending ILH D-II champion baseball team at Damien and said baseball at one time was his best sport.

With the help of Klaneski and the rest of the coaching staff, Arecchi has become equally good at both.

Now he wants a chance to play at the next level.

“I never really took football seriously until I came to Damien and our coaches are pretty great,” Arecchi said. “I can’t really say I’m that good because the players around me make me look good, but I try to give (football and baseball) equal attention and whatever I can maybe continue to play is what I’ll play.”

Responding to ranking

With his team suddenly ranked and feeling good after an emotional win over a good Saints team, Klaneski says they need to turn up the intensity in practice this week.

“Probably the hardest thing to do is keep them focused,” Klaneski said. “That’s our main concern this week, especially with ‘Iolani during their homecoming week. We’re going to turn it up and get these guys in gear.”

Arecchi is one of the players Klaneski won’t have to worry about.

“Defend Houghtailing (Street) is our mind-set,” Arecchi said. “We know that things run through us now. We’re the head of the table and we’re trying to run things. It’s like a new era at Damien and we don’t want to give that up.”