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From South Korea to Italy to Alabama to Hawaii, Max and Logan Rouse have seen more than their share of planet Earth.
“My experiences kind of numbed me to traveling. Each time I see something, like a beautiful mountain, I can think back to seeing two, three, four of these,” said Logan Rouse. “It’s still a beautiful mountain, but it ain’t like I got to take a picture.”
What stokes the fire for twins Logan and Max is a common passion for football. Max is a 6-foot-4, 270-pound right tackle and Logan is a 6-6, 235-pound defensive end, helping Aiea reach new pinnacles. Na Alii are ranked No. 8 in the Star-Advertiser Football Top 10, their highest ranking in years.
They were in eighth grade when the Rouse family moved from Alabama to the islands. From the Dauphin Junior High Dolphins to the Junior Alii JPS football program at Aiea.
“We knew the move was coming. It was kind of sad. I never keep in touch with my old friends,” Max Rouse said. “It’s like moving to a whole different culture, from the middle of the South to Hawaii. For a little bit, I had a southern accent and all that. I guess it’s still there.”
A common denominator is football.
“How everyone here treats football like high priority, it’s like that in Alabama. Whole towns close down, stores close early for the high school games,” he added. “There’s a lot of Polynesian influence here.”
“Here” is Aiea, which recently played in Washington state, beating Woodinville 38-14. Na Alii visited college after college along the way. Unlike other destinations on the travel ledger for the twin brothers, this was no ordinary trip.
“Our game there, that has to be on top. We got to represent the 808,” Logan Rouse said. “I wasn’t born here, but I’ve been here since I was 12, partially grew up here. The development years. So I have an attachment to the rock. It was cool to represent and show out. We got to defeat a mainland team.”
Along the way, Na Alii made the five-hour drive south to see another OIA team, Farrington, play McMinnville (Ore.). Aiea players were in full throttle in the bleachers, chanting and cheering the Governors on. Farrington rallied for a 21-18 win.
“The Farrington game, the energy was crazy. One of those nights you won’t forget,” Logan Rouse said. “Even though Farrington is technically one of our conference rivals, at the time it was Hawaii versus everybody. I don’t know how to explain it. You could feel the 808, the aloha. We were cheering louder than their student section.”
Aiea is 4-1 overall and 2-0 in OIA Division I. A year ago, Aiea was showing signs of brilliance, squeezing into the league title game and shocking Moanalua 17-14 for the crown.
This fall, Na Alii have walloped Kapaa, Roosevelt and Woodinville by a combined tally of 136-38. There was also a narrow 27-24 loss to Kapolei of the OIA Open Division. Over the weekend, Aiea edged past Kailua 13-7.
Up next is a key showdown with powerful Waipahu (3-1, 2-0), which has held its own in the trenches against Open and D-I foes alike. Max Rouse believes the offensive line at Aiea has yet to peak.
“We need to get everything to snap together for an entire game. We’re usually more on than off for the most part,” he said. “At left tackle, we have the prestigious four-star Preston Taumua. Left guard is Ezra (Nahoopii-Makakona). At center we have Parker Griep and right guard, Upu Howard.”
Taumua, who is 6-5 and 315 pounds, is one of three underclassmen on the starting O-line unit.
“I think he’ll get a lot better. He has the size and presence. He’s good at reading things,” Rouse said.
The Rouse twins have an older brother and older sister. They are the babies of the family, fraternal twins rather than identical.
“Logan was born first. He would say it matters, but to me it doesn’t really. We’re as different as any twins could be.”
On campus, it is not difficult to locate the twins.
“They both have mean beards,” said Wendell Say, a longtime school counselor who is in his 30th season as head coach. “They are twins, but their personalities are different. Maxi is serious, the studious one. Logan’s more laid back. Both are very smart. Max scored 27 on his ACT and Logan scored 26. They both scored about a 1300 on the SAT.”
Max Rouse has a 3.8 grade-point average and is looking at Pacific University (Ore.) as a potential landing spot.
“They offered a roster spot. I don’t have any scholarship offers. I was thinking of majoring in engineering, something I can see that would help the world,” he said.
The brothers don’t spend a ton of time watching movies together. Their tastes diverge there. Max’s favorite movie is “The Revenant,” a cold, brutal story about revenge. Logan’s favorite flick is “Kung Fu Panda.” He was and still is bothered by the sequel, “Kung Fu Panda 2.”
Spoiler alert here.
“I feel like No. 2 took it way more serious than it should’ve been. The series for the most part is light-hearted. The plot of No. 2 was about the main antagonist kills the protagonist’s parents. In the ‘Kung Fu Panda 3,’ they find out the parents are alive and just chilling in the village.”
The one place they bond is where they started: Georgia. The Rouse family hails from the Peach State. The twins both cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs and Atlanta Falcons. Their sense of accountability is also rooted through their parents, Edward and Mary. Lt. Colonel Edward Rouse played some football in his day.
“He only tells us he played middle linebacker,” Max Rouse said. “He’s more of a quiet guy. After the game, or if he could go on the field, he’ll coach us up a little bit, but he’s not the type of parent to be screaming.”
Though twins run in both sides of the Rouse family tree, Lt. Col. Rouse didn’t anticipate that twist.
“It was a surprise,” he said. “They’re very protective of each other. They have a dedication to be better without compromising their integrity.”
Without an in-house football program for middle schools in Hawaii, the move was a big change.
“Here, they don’t have football like the middle schools in Alabama. I think it was good for them to have the coaches they had because they show daily that they truly care about the kids’ development as young men,” Edward Rouse said. “I think they would’ve had more recruitment if we had stayed in Alabama. Being in Hawaii, you have to work harder to allow (college) coaches to know you exist, but overall, the family loves Hawaii.”
Their footholds on different sides of the ball beg the question: What happens when RT Rouse battles DE Rouse on the practice field?
“He’s usually on the weak side and I’m a right tackle. At practice, I block against him a few times, but we’re usually (in) shells. Full pads is a little extra. We don’t go full pads ever,” Max Rouse said. “Logan has a couple different moves. He’s pretty good. They’re normal moves all defensive ends throw, but he’s better than most in my opinion.”
Defensive tactics, technique and strategy have evolved quickly in recent years, but Max is a classic defender when it comes to football IQ of O-linemen.
“On the O-line, you have to know a lot of things. (Defensive linemen) have to know five things. We have to know what to do against a 5-tech, 3-tech, 1-tech, the linebacker. We’ve got to know who has what,” Max Rouse said.
Logan Rouse hit his high school years and was suddenly isolated along with his peers by the pandemic. He was 6-3 and 170 pounds as a freshman in the fall of 2019. He was 6-4, 180 a year later as a sophomore, but during those quiet times, he caught a bug: weight training.
“I was lifting at home, and then Pearl Harbor gym. I used to go by myself. Now I go to Powerhouse Gym with Sila (Unutoa),” he said.
Logan Rouse considers Unutoa, a 6-2, 300-pound lineman, the funniest of his teammates.
“Sila has the right jokes for the right time,” he said.
By fall of 2021, Logan Rouse was 6-5 and 210 pounds. He’s grown an inch in the year since, adding 25 pounds. His dead lift max is 475 pounds.
“I definitely felt the difference. I was still doing cardio, but it definitely got harder as I was putting on a lot of muscle. My mobility came back in the last half-month of summer when I was really factoring it in,” said Logan, who runs a 4.87 40. “The thing that helped is circles, the tackle wheel, circle of cones.”
As the pandemic waned, another hurdle. The Rouse family was one of many who were affected by the tainted water controversy at Red Hill, which led Logan Rouse to a new circle of friends.
“They paid for us to move to Waikiki, so every Sunday I would meet with coach Kip Akana and the Trench Dawgz,” he said of the 5 a.m. workouts at Ala Moana Beach Park. “Poncho (Laloulu), Ka‘eo (Akana). It was more building a mindset of being a beast. Being there for a short amount of time has really helped me athletically succeed. I’m more of an honorary member. I didn’t play with them when they had a team and all that.”
The family moved back to military housing.
“We don’t use the water from the system. We use the water jugs,” Logan Rouse said. “We still wash dishes, take showers. My thing is, the amount of oil (in the water system) might not have been 100 percent, but that’s still too much. The Army, the moment it started becoming noticeable, they paid for everyone to go to the hotels. The Navy was the one that took a much longer time to accommodate the people affected.”
Max Rouse leans toward the cerebral, but the pandemic taught him well.
“I’ve learned that communication, no matter how small or big, is extremely critical for your dreams, or something as small as meeting new people. Keeping contact with friends,” he said.
LOGAN ROUSE
Aiea defensive end, 6-6, 235
MAX ROUSE
Aiea right tackle, 6-4, 270
TWIN SENIORS
>> Who was born first: “Logan was born first,” Max said. “He would say it matters, but to me it doesn’t really.”
>> Did you know?: Max and Logan are fraternal twins, not identical. At 270 pounds, Max runs the 40-yard dash in 5.0 seconds.
>> Favorite movies: Max’s favorite is “The Revenant.” Logan’s is “Kung Fu Panda.”
>> Max’s favorite foods: Skittles, cheddar Sun Chips, lemonade. Logan: Leonard’s malasadas, Spam musubi, McDonald’s strawberry banana smoothie.
>> Logan’s favorite music artists: Usher, T-Pain, The-Dream. Max: DMX, Snoop Dogg, Johnny Cash.
>> Logan and Max’s favorite teams: Georgia Bulldogs, Atlanta Falcons.
>> Max’s hidden talent: “I’m usually good with animals.”
>> Logan’s time machine: “I definitely would not go to the past. I would go to the future to see what’s up. With global warming, I might not want to go too far, but maybe 50 years.”
>> Max’s time machine: “I’d go back into the past, maybe 2011 or ’12. That’s when my family was in South Korea or Italy. I’d go back and enjoy the things I’ve seen in pictures. I hardly remember anything from back then.”
>> Max’s shoutouts: “Shoutout to the running back (Kaimana Lale-Saole) and quarterback (Ezekiel Olie), and the O-line for being real ones. You can’t always rely on skills to get the job done. The defense and D-line for always holding it down. To my family for being there and the people back home who can’t be there. Shoutout to coach Keone Funtanilla. He works in depth with the O-line to make them better.”
>> Logan’s shoutouts: “First, I want to shout out my family, mom (Mary), dad (Edward) and sister (Aerial), my brother (Damien). Mr. Kip Akana.”
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