A fresh opportunity for graduating high school football players will be available in January when Hawaii 8, a new spring semester football league will conduct its inaugural season.
Around the country, you can find club football in may locations, but, because this is Hawaii, you probably know it’s going to be a little different, and that will surely be the case.
In a lot of places, club teams are similar to junior varsity squads for colleges, filled with players who fell through the cracks of college recruiting and need that one last chance. Often, these players are ones that didn’t pursue academics with any consistency and their grade point averages worked against them in recruiting. Maybe they were injured and didn’t play their senior seasons and therefore didn’t get recruited.
Hawaii 8, with five club teams organized through Hawaii community colleges next year, and three more anticipated to join in 2021, is not the same last chance opportunity for players that it is on the mainland.
Here, in a real way, for a lot of football players, Hawaii 8 could be the first chance solution.
“We are here to boost campus enrollment at all eight (community colleges), to generate student retention after high school and, of course, if we do that, we will also boost graduation rates,” said Keala Pule Sr., executive director of the new league.
Coaches are ready, all of them sharing in the vision of a place for Hawaii players to continue their education, have an opportunity to play NCAA level football and draw the attention of college recruiters at schools across the country.
If you happen to live in Helena, Montana instead of Hilo, Hawaii, you don’t have this problem. You started in high school, maybe you were a late bloomer, maybe you thought you would get an offer, but the offer never came.
In Montana, you can drive to the nearest football-playing junior college and get yourself a tryout and perhaps an opportunity.
Until now, in Hawaii, there was no place only a car drive away to enroll, take college classes, play football and maybe get that opportunity you had hoped for.
If the ohana can afford it, Big Island football prospects can be sent to showcase events on Oahu and the mainland in successive years and with enough training and dedication to technique, there’s an outside chance a recruiter might see them and make a note.
But it’s an outside chance because Division I college recruiters don’t live here, they live in places where they can see top prospects in a 15-minute drive from work or home, in many cases. The Hawaii 8 concept is a missing piece for Hawaii football players and the hope here is that the mold could be used for basketball, volleyball, baseball and soccer.
Technically speaking, these will be club teams, but the name can be disorienting.
“What it means,” said Pule, “is that these teams are privately funded, not funded through the schools themselves, that’s the only distinction, because everything we do is through NCAA guidelines.”
In January, Hawaii 8 will field five teams, Kauai, Leeward, Windward, Maui and Moku O Keawe, the Big Island team using the traditional Hawaiian reference to the Big Island. In 2021, plans are in motion for Honolulu, Kapiolani and Palamanui, the Kona-area team, to join and transform the five-team league into Hawaii 8.
All the teams are privately funded and each of the community colleges will benefit from the incoming students as all eight of the schools have experienced levels of decline in student enrollment over several years. It is a trend mirrored, but deeper in severity at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
Parents of high school football players who don’t have unlimited finances to send their sons to expensive scouting combines should take note, because your plans for next year start right now.
The end of high school is being counted down in weeks, soon to be days. If your athlete has the grades and hasan offer in hand, congratulations.
If not, it should be worthy of an Ohana Discussion Moment, parents and sons.
Without a plan for the future, the best opportunity could well be to get the high school transcript ready and enroll in a local community college. The requirement is to be a full time student, you can’t just take a shop class, and you can’t take the first step for tryouts in June and July until you are enrolled.
Part two is to secure an eight-digit University of Hawaii Identification Number you get after enrolling.
That’s all the advance work, leading up to tryouts.
“It’s all new to all of us,” said Moku O Keawe coach Andy Chun, “so we are figuring it out as we go, but this whole approach is education based, so that’s the most important thing — get enrolled.”
The idea, down at the core, is that when the league gets going in January, there will be dozens more football players taking college classes. If they stay for two years and still don’t get that offer they want, they will at least have a head start on an education.
“It’s a great opportunity for local kids to continue to showcase their abilities without having to go to the mainland in order to play football in community college,” said Craig Stutzmann, the Rainbow Warriors’ passing game coordinator and former quarterback coach for Marcus Mariota. “It’s a great idea and it’s been a long time coming.”
Time is of the essence for this league that has never staged a single game or even a tryout as yet. But all of that is about to change. The season will begin in January’s spring semester, which means practices will be held prior to that and tryouts prior to practices.
“I don’t have dates yet,” Chun said, “but it’s all going to happen, we are all getting fired up about it.”
Chun said a few “select individuals” have heard about the league through word of mouth and are interested. He said he knows of “a dozen or so” high school players interested, but he expects that number to climb as soon as word spreads.
His goal is to have 50 players enrolled and turning out for Moku O Keawe’s first season, which is not that far away.
The future is right in front of high school football in Hawaii. The next step can be taken without leaving home.
In terms of enrollment in Hawaii community colleges and the opportunities available to graduating high school players, it will be a giant step.
Contact Bart with information on individual players, teams or groups deserving of more awareness at barttribuneherald@gmail.com