To help celebrate its golden anniversary 50th Super Bowl and the players who have made the event what it has become, the NFL will pay homage to…Molokai High School?

In the drum beat leading up to the milestone Feb. 7, 2016 game, the NFL says it plans to have one of its specially-commissioned and encased golden footballs delivered to Ho‘olehua for ceremonial presentation as part of its Super Bowl High School Honor Roll program.

Part of what makes tiny Molokai High stand out from the vast number of other schools nationally — including local powers Kahuku, Punahou and Saint Louis — that will also receive the inscribed Wilson footballs — is that the Farmers didn’t field a football team for 45 of those years.

The tribute is made all the more endearing for the fact that one of its graduates, Kimo von Oelhoffen, who only played volleyball and basketball for the Farmers, went on to start at defensive end in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Super Bowl XL victory over Seattle. It was the exclamation point on a remarkable tale of persistence that became a 15-year NFL career in which he played 197 games, starting 146 of them.

In that von Oelhoffen and Molokai are a 24-karat fit for precisely what the NFL says it wants to salute. “We want to honor the schools and the great men they produced,” said Peter O’Reilly, NFL Senior Vice President of Events.

Eleven schools in Hawaii are due to receive footballs representing 16 players — a football for every player or head coach who graduated from the high school and was on an active Super Bowl roster — according to NFL spokesman Brenden Lee.

Kahuku and Punahou have three players each and many of the local presentations are expected to come during the buildup to the return of the Pro Bowl, Jan. 31, 2016 at Aloha Stadium.

“The footballs feature the high school’s name and location, honoree’s name and the Super Bowl(s) the honoree appeared in,” Lee said.

Another ball is scheduled to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame next month.

“That’s an awesome expression from the NFL, especially for a small school like Molokai and one of our own,” Molokai principal Stan Hao said.

The one honoring the player they knew as “Scooby” will likely go in the glass case entrance to the gym, heretofore home of the Farmers’ state championships, where it figures to serve as both considerable inspiration and a conversation piece. “Having someone of that stature and that experience would definitely have an impact for those students who are here,” Hao said.

Von Oelhoffen, a largely self-built player, spent one year at the University of Hawaii before going on to a junior college and playing at Boise State, where he became a sixth-round pick of Cincinnati in the 1994 NFL Draft.

The golden football will arrive during a revival of the sport at Molokai High. The school dropped football after the 1960-61 school year and didn’t reinstate it until the 2010 season, when the Farmers began playing the eight-man variety in the Maui Interscholastic League.

“We greatly appreciate that we will be able to have something that recognizes that a student from our school participated in the NFL,” Hao said. “But I think people might be shocked to see something like that in our trophy case since we didn’t have football for such a long time.”

Perhaps, but there might not be many more golden stories to go with it anywhere.

NFL Golden Football (Local Super Bowl honorees)

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.