Made in Hawaii

Jordan Fukumoto was one of 40 receivers on the field that day. P.J. Minaya and T.C. Campbell took their first reps as part of a nine-way quarterback battle.

No, this wasn’t a camp in high school. This was the first official day of college football practice at Pacific (Ore.).

"It was absolute chaos," said defensive coordinator Jacob Yoro, a Saint Louis alumnus. "We had over 100 freshmen out there and none of these kids had any idea of what we were supposed to do.

"Looking back on it, we as coaches probably didn’t have much of a clue either."

Pacific fielded its first football team in 19 years in 2010, when nearly 130 players came out for the first practice in the summer.

After losing 17 of their first 18 games, the Boxers are 7-2 in this, the fourth season since the restart.

Saturday will mark the final game for the senior class that arrived on campus starting a program from scratch.

Pacific hosts Linfield (Ore.), which is 8-0 and ranked No. 2 in Division III.

"It’s going to be really exciting," Campbell said. "I’m just happy for all of the seniors. It’s been a long journey, but so rewarding at the same time."

The school hired UC Davis alum Keith Buckley in the summer of 2009 to lead the reboot of the Pacific football program.

As he started the process of putting together a team, one of the first things Buckley did was research the identity of the current student body.

Pacific has always been a popular spot for kids from Hawaii, as nearly a quarter of its enrollment comes from the islands.

Buckley immediately realized that could also hold true for a football team.

"It was a pretty easy niche that I thought we could take advantage of in the recruiting process," Buckley said.

He wanted an assistant coach with Hawaii ties and found Yoro, who was serving as the linebackers coach at Montana Western.

He offered Yoro the same position at Pacific and the former Saint Louis and Waipahu assistant coach was intrigued at the idea of starting a program from scratch.

Together, the two scoured Hawaii for talent, bringing in 31 players from the islands who made the final roster for 2010.

"We sold them a vision for the future, and I think the thing that got us through those start-up years was a commitment to honesty with the kids," Buckley said. "We didn’t pretend with them that in certain games we could just roll out there and beat teams. We constantly focused on getting better as a team and we measured ourselves only in games as what we saw of ourselves on film."

Two of those players recruited from Hawaii were Campbell, who had just quarterbacked Kamehameha to the 2009 state championship, and Minaya, who set an Oahu high school record with 511 yards passing in a game.

They immediately competed against each other in a quarterback battle that has continued to this day.

"We’re good friends and it’s always kind of been that way," Minaya said. "I just knew (in high school) that I wanted to play and play right away, I didn’t want to sit for two years. I came here knowing a lot of other Hawaii guys were going to come here and I thought if we all come up and start a program, it’d be pretty fun."

It’s fun now, but it hasn’t always been that way.

Jon Lee, a Castle graduate, scored the first points on a 26-yard field goal. Campbell threw for 1,217 yards and 11 touchdowns. Fukumoto, a Saint Louis alumnus, caught six touchdown passes and made all-conference.

Still, that first season ended without a win.

Pacific went 0-9 and was outscored by an average of 46-17. The Boxers lost 69-7 to Willamette (Ore.) and 66-14 to Linfield.

"It was the most mentally stressing thing for me that I’ve ever had to deal with," Campbell said. "I knew it was going to be a process, but the competitor in you wants to win so bad. It was tough."

The losing streak reached 16 games before, in late October 2011, Campbell threw for 387 yards and five touchdowns, including two to Fukumoto, in a 44-25 win over Puget Sound.

"That was pretty cool because you felt like all of the hard work was finally paying off," Fukumoto said.

"The students rushed the field," Minaya added. "It was kind of cool and kind of weird at the same time because it was like we won a championship but all we had done is won one game."

It was a win the Boxers had yet to experience and a feeling that Pacific has started to get used to.

"To be honest, with that freshman class, we got lucky," Yoro said. "We got a bunch of great kids that bought in and did what we asked of them. It was tough for us to go through those first three years.

"We’ve come to an end of the road for a lot of those senior guys, and to honor them this weekend, it’s definitely going to be an emotional time."

Pacific nearly doubled its win total of the previous three years this season, winning seven of nine. Any shot of playing for the Northwest Conference championship on Saturday against Linfield ended with last week’s 21-17 loss to Willamette in which the Boxers blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead.

"We’re five points away from playing for a championship Saturday," Buckley said. "We could have been 9-0 and we aren’t, but I think that confidence and that expectation level is what I might be most proud about this senior class and what they have created.

"There’s a higher expectation here now for championship-level success. That’s the legacy they have created."

Minaya and Campbell will split time at quarterback like they have all season. Fukumoto missed most of last year after breaking his leg in the second game, but said he likely won’t use his redshirt year.

Other players are in a similar situation, but as many as 12 players from Hawaii could be playing in their final game.

One thing is for sure, however. The kids who came to Pacific four years ago wanting to leave a legacy behind, certainly have.

"That’s what a lot of us wanted to do," Campbell said. "We did it playing with a lot of our brothers from back home.

"There are a lot of guys up here from home with the talent to play D-I, but whether people thought they were undersized or whatever, we got to come together here and just ball out and play.

"We did what we loved to do and now a lot of players from Hawaii will be able to do the same."

That’s a legacy worth leaving.