Perhaps one of the teams didn’t belong in the First Hawaiian Bank/HHSAA Football State Championships Division II final Friday at Aloha Stadium. But it wasn’t ‘Iolani. … Waipahu has one of the largest enrollments in the state, and that’s what classification is supposed to be about — that, and size of the players.
The Marauders of the public-school Oahu Interscholastic Association — hampered by an injury to their starting quarterback — were dissected 34-0 by the private school Raiders of the Interscholastic League of Honolulu.
And, once again, the automatic assumption from many corners is that in addition to the ‘okina in front of its name, ‘Iolani should be spelled with an asterisk on the back end in the state tourney football record book.
Coach Wendell Look’s program is so consistently excellent that it has now won five consecutive D-II state finals. That record makes people think ‘Iolani, a small but wealthy private school, is a big bully and that these are somehow hollow victories.
A couple of years ago when the Raiders were very big in the trenches I began to buy into this a bit. But the 2011 ‘Iolani team is, player-for-player, one of the smallest but most fundamentally sound high school football teams I’ve seen in a long time.
Jordan Lee, a senior slotback and kicker for the Raiders, is listed at 5 feet 8 and 160 pounds. No way. I’m 5-8 and have at least a couple of inches on him. But Lee played like a giant Saturday, rushing for 177 yards. He also kicked two field goals.
And Lee runs behind a line that averages less than 200 pounds per player.
Ask him after winning to date the biggest game of his life, and of course Lee says he believes he and his teammates can match up with the much-bigger Kahuku and Punahou teams.
“Division I is a big step; we play them during the season and I think we can compete. They’re a lot bigger, but I think we could do it.”
Look gets the question every season. He understands it will always be asked, but you can’t blame him for getting tired of it. “I wish the critics would just give these kids their due and the credit that they deserve,” he said after Saturday’s victory.
‘Iolani beat Waipahu because of rock solid defense, quarterback Reece Foy’s steadiness and Lee’s running, and because it took advantage of the Marauders’ mistakes (five turnovers to one, 84 penalty yards to 55).
And the Raiders play much bigger than they are because they’re smart and tough. It’s been that way for a long time, largely because they’ve been well-coached, going back to the days of Eddie Hamada and even before that with Father Bray.
In 1980 the school’s greatest football victory came in the form of a tie — 7-7 with Waianae, when the Seariders were perennial OIA champions and loaded with hard-hitting talent (coached by an ‘Iolani graduate, Larry Ginoza). The Raiders had some size in the Tufono brothers and a few others, but mostly were like this year’s team — small, athletic, tough, smart.
Most importantly, like 31 years ago, the Raiders play together.
“We’ve bonded since early summer and became a brotherhood. It’s the One Team spirit,” Lee says.
“It never gets old,” Look says. “Because the players are always new.”
Once again, ‘Iolani is a state championship team, period. No asterisk.
