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Kawehena Johnson will look at a clock from time to time and get hit with a sudden panic attack.
“I’m supposed to be at team meetings,” he would think, or, “I’m late to morning workouts.”
WHEN IT MATTERS
Kawehena Johnson had a knack for playing his best with the most on the line. Here’s a look at the biggest games he played in both high school and college.
HIGH SCHOOL
Sept. 29, 2012, Farrington
The No. 1 and No. 2-ranked teams in the state faced off after the Govs had won the regular season game a year earlier. Johnson finished with nine tackles, two touchdowns, an interception and a forced fumble. He forced the fumble on the first play from scrimmage and returned an interception for a TD later in the first quarter. He added a second TD on a 16-yard reception.
Nov. 23, 2012, Punahou, state title game
In the only other game of season pitting No. 1 vs. No. 2, Johnson intercepted Punahou QB Larry Tuileta — who had thrown only one pick all year — twice, and scored on a 66-yard hook-and-ladder play at the end of the first half.
COLLEGE
Sept. 14, 2013, UTEP
Earned his first collegiate start in his fourth game and recorded his first interception, returning it 25 yards, to go along with four tackles
Sept. 20, 2014, New Mexico
In annual rivalry game, had 12 tackles and forced a fumble.
Sept. 27, 2014, at LSU
Had a team-high 12 tackles, an interception and forced two of his three fumbles on the season in Death Valley.
A split-second later, he will relax and everything will return to normal.
Well, maybe not normal, but reality will sink back in. Truth is, nothing has been normal in the life of the Kahuku alumnus for the past year.
Twelve months ago on a Saturday evening in Las Cruces, N.M., Johnson took the field in the home opener for the New Mexico State football team.
His body didn’t feel quite right a week after playing Florida in The Swamp. He had developed a problem with neck stingers that had routinely plagued him in college. It got so bad that he once suffered two in the same game.
Nobody else really knew how bad it was. He’s a football player, after all. He came to New Mexico State instead of Hawaii because he wanted to play right away.
Johnson filled the hole from his starting safety spot and recorded his seventh tackle against Georgia State when, at 5 feet 8 and 176 pounds, he stuffed the opposing running back, knocking the ball free.
New Mexico State recovered, but as the defense went to celebrate, Johnson remained on the ground.
“I just went numb,” Johnson said. “I just couldn’t move. My arms were locked and it’s hard to explain. I kept telling my trainer ‘just let me walk off’ because my main thing was I didn’t want to get carted off the field.
“He told me to ‘shut up and stay down,’ ” Johnson remembers. “He said, ‘you can’t move. You might have a broken neck.’ ”
Johnson never lost consciousness and said it took roughly 30 to 45 minutes to regain feeling throughout his entire body.
He was out of the hospital before the end of the night and doctors said he bruised his spinal cord.
Johnson figured it was only a matter of time until he would get back on the field, but as the days turned into weeks turned into months, reality began to set in.
It wasn’t until the start of spring practice this season that doctors told him they wouldn’t clear him. His football career was over.
Maile Johnson, Kawe’s mother, won’t watch football anymore. Darren Johnson, Kawe’s father and former head coach at Kaimuki and Kailua, says Saturdays this fall aren’t the same as they had always been.
“I don’t look forward to college football anymore, because he’s not playing,” Darren Johnson said. “We’re past the point where we can accept he’s not playing, but it’s not the same.”
Kawehena Johnson, who remains at NMSU and is on track to graduate in four years in May, misses it all the time.
His body wakes him up early for morning workouts, even though the alarm isn’t set. He goes to practice and watches the team. He helps individual players with their workouts, but turned down a graduate assistant position on the coaching staff.
“I can’t jump right back into it completely right now,” said Johnson, who finished with 130 tackles, four forced fumbles and three interceptions in 26 games.
In four years playing varsity football at Kahuku, Johnson only lost twice. In the most important games of his life, he came up the biggest.
As a senior, he picked off Punahou QB Larry Tuileta twice and scored a touchdown in the state title game. A year after losing to Farrington in the regular season, Johnson had nine tackles, two touchdowns, an interception, and forced a fumble on the Govs on the first play from scrimmage.
In college, he intercepted a pass during his first start. He went to Death Valley to play LSU and had 12 tackles, two forced fumbles, and an interception.
Johnson was a born playmaker and ranks up there with the toughest football players ever to come out of Hawaii.
Playing through pain and not revealing his injuries might have led to his career ending early. Ask him about regrets and his answer is not surprising.
“Absolutely not,” Johnson said. “All I’ve wanted to do is play football. Although New Mexico State may not have won a lot of games, I don’t regret coming here, because they gave me a chance to play. It would have been smarter (to not hide his injuries), but I’ve never liked sharing injuries with trainers and the coaching staff. I know how coaches react to that kind of thing and I didn’t ever want to be taken off the field.”
Doctors have said he will never be cleared. If he stands for long periods of time, he’ll feel the pain return to his neck.
When asked if he really was done playing football, his answer was again predictable.
“I’m not closing the book yet,” Johnson said. “We’ll see in a year or maybe six months. It’s still kind of open.”
It always will be for a football player like him.
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