After spending eight years helping the Kalani football program in various ways, Radford Dudoit is ready to take control.

The school announced Dudoit as the 17th head football coach in school history on Monday, replacing Scott Melemai, who is retiring after 22 years of coaching.

Dudoit, who served as both a varsity assistant coach and the junior varsity head coach last season, takes over a program coming off its best season ever.

Kalani went 6-2 in 2021, matching the 2013 team for the most wins in a season, and its .750 winning percentage is the best since the program began in 1960.

Melemai, who took over for Greg Taguchi in 2016, steps down as the second-winningest coach in program history and holds the best career winning percentage (22-21, .468).

Dudoit was brought into the program by Taguchi and continued to work under Melemai. He served under previous defensive coordinators, including Cal Lee, George Lumpkin and Kanani Souza.

“I’ve been here for a few years, and just within the past two years I came on board as staff working security, so I know the kids and I enjoy working with the kids,” Dudoit said. “This is a good group of kids we have at Kalani.”

Kalani won six of its last seven games last season, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the delay to the start of the season, only the top two teams in OIA Division II made a championship game playoff.

Kalani finished tied with Radford for second place but lost out due to a head-to-head tiebreaker.

Dudoit coached the junior varsity team to a 2-2 record. Kalani lost twice to Pearl City and beat Division I schools Moanalua and Roosevelt.

The Falcons were one of only two Division II schools able to field a junior varsity team.

“We kind of made do with the teams we had (in JV) and tried to schedule as many games as we could before we moved everybody up to varsity to gain experience,” Dudoit said. “We had total about 70 kids between varsity and JV and we had almost 100 percent vaccination (rates) for our football teams, so that helped us a lot because there’s where a lot of (other schools) lost players.”

Dudoit estimated the team graduated 30 seniors from last season, but has a large sophomore class ready to make the move up.

It’s the first head varsity football gig for Dudoit, who graduated from Kailua High School in 1995 after starting his prep career at Mid-Pacific and playing football for Pac-Five.

He coached football and lacrosse in Oregon before returning to Hawaii in 2013, when he began coaching at Kalani.

The Falcons will remain in OIA Division II this season. An official schedule has yet to be announced.