During each Hawaii football practice, the field is cleared for three marvels — agents of shield — to work on their specialty.

The shield is Jonah La‘ulu, Blessman Ta‘ala and Emil Graves — a three-man wall about 10 yards from the line of scrimmage that is responsible for providing protection for punters Stan Gaudion and Ben Scruton.

To be a member of the shield, according to special teams coordinator Michael Ghobrial, is a “kind of a code of honor.”

The Rainbow Warriors’ punt protection has been among the nation’s best. The Warriors have not had a punt blocked since Notre Dame’s Sergio Brown got his fingerprints on Tim Grasso’s first-quarter attempt in the 2008 Hawaii Bowl. Since then, UH punts have been launched successfully 671 times in 136 games, equating to 492,384 block-free seconds of game time.

“Finding out it’s been going on for years, and upholding what it takes to be on this unit, we take it very seriously,” Graves said. “We don’t like to be out there to give the opponent back the ball (with a punt), but if we’ve got to do it, we want to be perfect at it.”

The shield was designed in the 1960s, but was resurrected by Cincinnati and UNLV about a decade ago. In UH’s version, middleman Ta‘ala flexes behind either Graves or La‘ulu, creating a lane from long-snapper Wyatt Tucker and the punter. After the football breezes through, Ta‘ala moves back to the middle to form a three-man wedge.

For the wedge, Ghobrial sought players with length (La‘ulu is 6-5), “with contact courage, which is all three of them, and guys who are accountable. That’s how guys filter themselves out.”

There were about nine finalists for the shield. But La‘ulu, Ta‘ala and Graves kept “showing up as the best ones,” Ghobrial said.

La‘ulu was a combo tight end/defensive end at Centennial High (Calif.), giving him the dual blocking and tackling background that are assets on the shield. Graves also has a two-way background, playing defensive lineman until focusing solely on the offensive line as a Los Alamitos High (Calif.) senior. Ta‘ala, who calls out the alerts, was a long-snapper at Faga‘itua High (American Samoa). Ta‘ala has one of UH’s three tackles on punt coverage.

“At the end of the day, that’s the unit we work on the most,” Ghobrial said. “When you talk about the importance of being able to protect, being able to cover … there are a lot of variables. We work on that unit more than any other unit.”

La‘ulu said: “Coach Ghobi prepares us well. It’s one of our essentials. We alert who’s going to rush. We make sure everybody has their assignments in. We make sure not to let anybody get an easy edge on us. We’re all dedicated. We all want to be successful. We want to execute and do our jobs.”