Ladies and gentlemen, we have preseason high school football.
Damien football coach and athletic director Eddie Klaneski confirmed that the Monarchs will visit Radford on Aug. 7 in the first official game for either program since the fall of 2019.
Also on the preseason-game docket: Moanalua at Pearl City, also on Aug. 7.
“It’s pretty exciting. We had a good conversation with our kids yesterday about this, trying to get them excited about the opportunity. We are about six, seven weeks away from getting back under the lights,” Klaneski said.
The list of preseason games will grow, just as the list of scrimmages has exploded in the past few days. Coaches are in scramble mode as they assess their current turnout numbers for non-mandatory conditioning workouts.
Many have reported low turnouts with incrementally improving numbers. A few, like Campbell, are bursting at the seams. The Sabers have roughly 90 players training for the varsity squad, and coach Darren Johnson will have to pare that down to 65 when official tryouts are done in July. A tri-scrimmage with Kahuku and Kaimuki on July 29 will help with evaluation immensely.
“I think Kahuku and our team will run 2s and 3s,” Johnson said of depth charts. “What we have now in the weight room is optional. Everyone has to be registered with the school, have concussion awareness, physicals all in place. They know they can’t participate or even come and watch unless they have those things lined up.”
Locker rooms are also off limits, per protocols. That means the 90 varsity hopefuls, along with 65 to 70 more with the junior varsity, are on the field 100% of the time at this point.
For Damien and many other schools, the cancellation of football in the 2020-21 year means that an enormous number of players are entering varsity football for a first time — some as seniors.
“The challenging thing is that more than half our team has not played a snap at the varsity level, but I’m sure that’s the case in many other programs, as well,” Klaneski said.
Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s announcement on June 11 regarding a modified Tier 4 affects City and County facilities, not high schools. A big push for the return of youth sports came from Councilwoman Andria Tupola and the Safe Sports Hawaii group.
“I think movement like this really helps the process that we are currently working toward,” Moanalua coach Vince Nihipali said.
“It didn’t make any difference in the planning (for preseason),” Kaimuki coach David Tautofi said. “We’re moving in faith and in hopes for all the best. At this point, it’s all we have.”
At Waianae, turnout has been middling at best. Like many other schools, eligibility is a concern after a distance-learning pandemic year. A few players have transferred to neighboring Kapolei.
“Our thing at Waianae is we have 400 kids going to summer school. That’s what I was told. Some of our players are in that, too,” Seariders coach Mike Fanoga said. “I told our coaches, you’ve just got to be patient, and that includes myself. It’ll pay off. We just have to hang in there and keep coming.”
The initiative of prep football coaches to schedule ahead of any official announcements from their respective leagues could stem the flow of student-athletes transferring to the mainland.
For Campbell, it is too late to reel in their former starting quarterback, Blaine Hipa. Entering his senior year, the promising passer is at Chandler in Arizona after losing his junior year to the pandemic.
“Blaine is the No. 1 guy at Chandler right now. He’s doing good. We helped him get there. When there was no season for him last year, he went up this spring and won the job,” Johnson said. “He had to do something that was for sure, for himself. You want him to compete and learn how to compete, and he won the job, It’s a good thing for him.”
