While watching for the Open Division state high school football championship Thursday this truism came to mind:
The guys who coach on Sunday learn from those who do it on Saturday, and the Saturday guys learn from those who coach on Fridays.
Normally, it’s in reference to creative offensive concepts and other things the coaches at the lower levels do out of necessity, but sometimes turn out to be innovative and effective at higher levels. If something that seems new in this sport works it eventually gets copied, even if it’s a Pop Warner coach’s original bright idea.
But recent events make it seem the pro and college coaches could benefit from a look at the playbooks of the high school coaches when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus, too.
The days of the week are off a little bit because right now it’s bowl season. So we’re talking about Thursday and Friday instead of Friday and Saturday. The high school state championships were contested Thursday and the EasyPost Hawaii Bowl, which turns out to be the EasyDecisionToCancel Hawaii Bowl, was supposed to be played today.
How could it be that thousands of spectators could congregate for these high school games, not a lot of social distancing going on in the crowded stands of Skippa Diaz Stadium? Well, everyone is masked and vaxxed, or in lieu of vaccination, the possessors of very recent negative test results for the coronavirus.
We can only hope there are no breakthrough cases, and we’ll know in a week or so.
Another question is why are there so many UH football players who have tested positive that they can’t have a game, but these four high school teams had no such problems?
‘Iolani has exactly 40 players on its roster, which is not unusual for the Raiders. But when you have that few, no one is allowed to get injured. No one is allowed to get the virus.
How did ‘Iolani do it? How did they manage to stay so disciplined that they could even play a couple more games after the Interscholastic League of Honolulu season and before the state tournament?
“We followed the science,” defensive coordinator Delbert Tengan said.
The Raiders had their stuff together so well that the school’s leadership even deemed it safe enough to invite parents to their final regular-season game, back when state officials were still freaking out over UH’s requests to allow parents at its games.
“On defense we only had 18 guys all year,” Tengan said.
“It’s the maturity of these guys. Look at what’s happening with the NFL, look at the NCAA, canceling games.”
Tengan wasn’t taking a rip at UH; he was too busy coaching the Raiders during their blanking of Lahainaluna in the Division I championship game to be up on the breaking news — heartbreaking for some Warriors players, such as the seniors who were looking forward to that one final game. Not to mention Memphis, which came all this way for no game; well, the Tigers did get a few days in Hawaii.
In fairness, college football teams have a lot more moving parts than high school teams … and moving people, traveling all over the country, all the easier to be exposed to the virus.
But with double-digit positive cases, it makes you wonder if some UH players were a little less dedicated to keeping social distance and following other protocols after finals and during the holiday celebration season since team morale had become such an issue.
Even if you put aside the anonymous complaints about coach Todd Graham, the fact remains that the starting quarterback, running back and shutdown cornerback decided it’d be better for them to enter the transfer portal than continue on here.
I spoke with Graham after Tuesday’s pre-no bowl press conference and asked him about morale, and if the bowl preparations were helping to heal the team.
“We’re good,” he said. “Our guys are fired up.”
One thing about Graham; he’s one of the all-time greats at coach-speak, the art of answering questions without a lot of specifics that could give away what’s really going on.
During the press conference, he answered one question about his game plan with so much profound vagueness that his counterpart, Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield, asked if we could just “cut and paste what he said.”
Well, we’ll never know who had the better game plan, because the pandemic rules and nothing is what it used to be. But Thursday night at Farrington, if we took our minds off the masks and the stadium being smaller, the state championships were almost normal.
