This is the best that University of Hawaii linebacker Corey Paredes has felt in so long that he has to think about it for a while to locate a reference point.
He can tell you when the pain in his left shoulder finally subsided so that he could sleep unhindered. When his ankles returned to what passes for normal. And when his thumbs no longer throbbed. Even the date of his most recent surgery.
But as for the last time that he actually felt all-around good, well, that requires some exhaustive thought. And, he eventually acknowledges, it probably recalls a time before the 2010 season began.
Of course "good" is a relative term for Paredes, who views an absence of pain as a symptom of dereliction of duty for a linebacker. Pain is both something he lives with and dishes out.
"(A day) after a game you should feel something," Paredes said. "If you don’t feel like an old man, then you probably haven’t left everything out on the field. That’s the way I have felt since (Castle) High School. It (pain) is a good feeling after a game because it means you let everything out."
Statistics tell us Paredes must have left little more than fumes in the tank last year, because his 151 tackles were the second-highest single-season total in UH history.
Only Jeff Ulbrich (169 in 1999) has managed more.
But the miles of trainers’ tape that criss-crossed his 5-foot-11, 235-pound frame, and the archive of X-rays say plenty, too. Paredes managed his tackles and earned All-Western Athletic Conference honors playing with one good, if battered, shoulder, a flimsy ankle and a lot of determination for the second half of the season.
Still, as UH assistant coach Cal Lee likes to put it, Paredes "ran like a deer and hit like a bull."
If medical science wonders how it was accomplished, it can join former Nevada quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who has been left to ponder how Paredes was able to run across the field and get to the goal line in time to bat away the ball for the key play in UH’s 27-21 upset of the nationally ranked Wolf Pack.
The one-time walk-on turned team captain "is like a real old-time, hard-nosed football player," said head coach Greg McMackin. "He may not have the size, but he has the Warrior heart. He’s not 6 foot, 4 inches or something, but he has brains, quickness, speed and instinct of a real football player."
The pained grimace that Paredes often wore much of last season, except while making big plays, has been replaced by a comfortable smile as he goes about what would have otherwise been seen as the rigors of fall camp. After sitting out the spring to allow his left shoulder to recover from surgery, it is a smile much in evidence any time the suggestion is made that he might want to ease into preparation for the Sept. 3 season opener with Colorado or slow things down and take it easy for a while.
"I don’t know how to (take it easy)," Paredes says. "I need to get my work in. I need to hit. I want to be ready for the start of the season."
And the Warriors need him to be. So there is an understanding of sorts that Paredes will, as he says, "stay within my limits. And not hit off my shoulder when I don’t need to."
If he does that and stays healthy for the start, the Warriors will have cause to feel pretty good, too.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com.
