Warriors’ football future begins on Wednesday

The Hawaii football team will make a down payment on the 2018 season when about a dozen players sign National Letters of Intent on Wednesday.

For the opening of the three-day signing period, the Rainbow Warriors also will receive reconfirmations from prospects who committed the past February but delayed enrolling at UH until next month. Ryan Meskell, a placekicker who was placed on scholarship at the start of the fall semester, will count toward the 2018 recruiting class.

The 2018 class includes two quarterbacks — Chevan Cordeiro of Saint Louis School and Jeremy Moussa of Eleanor Roosevelt High in Chino, Calif. Cordeiro was named the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s offensive player of the year after leading the Crusaders to the 2017 state title.

“No doubt,” Saint Louis coach Cal Lee said when asked if Cordeiro could continue his success at the college level. “I like everything about him. Besides all the ability to run and throw the ball, he’s a guy who listens and learns. And he executes. That’s the bottom line.”

Moussa told the Star-Advertiser he will graduate a semester early and join the Warriors in January. Moussa will participate in the offseason conditioning program and spring practice.

Eric Rooks, a 6-foot-3, 215-pound wideout, also will enroll at UH next month. Rooks is a 2017 graduate of De La Salle Institute in Chicago. He spent the past semester at The Taft School, a prep school in Connecticut. Rooks and his family visited UH the same weekend the Warriors were opening the 2017 season against UMass on the East Coast.

“I loved the family environment that Hawaii promotes,” Rooks said. “I was a big advocate of family environment before I went to Hawaii. That was part of my decision.”

Running back Khoury Bethley of Don Lugo High in Chino, Calif. said he will sign with the Warriors on Wednesday. Bethley recently received “Positive Athlete” recognition on CNN. The segment, introduced by former NFL receiver Hines Ward, told of Bethley fulfilling a promise to his mother to attend college. His mother died of brain cancer in 2005, when Bethley was 6.

Wednesday’s commitments also will include Saint Louis defensive back Kai Kaneshiro and receiver Jonah Panoke.

“He’s aggressive,” Lee said of Kaneshiro. “He’s got some skills. He can run, play man coverage (and) zone coverage. He has a natural kind of stuff. He has that football sense.”

Lee said Panoke has “talent, ability, everything.”