Like his football teams at Hilo High School these last five years, coach Kaeo Drummondo is on the move, in more ways than one.
Last week’s announcement that Drummondo is moving to Oahu to be the defensive coordinator for an old friend, Albert Ma’afala at Kamehameha-Kapalama, rattled the coaching cages on the Big Island just a bit because in his time at Hilo, the Vikings were dominant, and then some.
They ran through BIIF competition like wild pigs through a field of sugar cane, winning the league championship each year and moving on to the state tournament where they won two state championships (2017, 2019), and played for a third.
Along the way, Drummondo nearly bolted for an assistant’s job at a California community college, thought better of it and returned to stack up some more wins.
At Kamehameha, Drummondo transitions from the relatively small pool of combatants in the BIIF to a much bigger pool filled with sharks that competes, arguably, in the most challenging group in the state, the ILH Open Division, the one with Saint Louis and Punahou, regular meetings with the likes of Kahuku and Mililani are included as well.
The annual challenge bears some resemblance to a college-level murderer’s row, maybe like a trip through a schedule including Alabama, Georgia, Clemson and Texas A&M.
The initial reaction is to wish him luck and every coach needs a little of that along the way, but Drummondo understands it’s a steep hill ahead.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” he said over a cup of coffee the other day. “It’s going to be fun.”
Yeah, sure, fun like the kind the guy has on a tightrope walking across a volcano when a stiff crosswind shows up unannounced.
Drummondo, who attended KS-Kapalama, is fully aware that the ground Ma’afala stands on is a little brittle, to say the least. The Warriors are coming off a 2-7 league record, 3-7 in all, after averaging just 15.3 points per game while allowing 26.9 last season.
There were persistent rumors that it would be Ma’afala’s last year at the school, but he was retained with the hope that things would change in a noticeable way in 2020.
It’s a big challenge when you consider the most recent results against the top squads on Oahu were not promising. In 2019, they lost to Kahuku (6-1, 9-4), 21-13, to Punahou (8-2, 10-2), 47-20, to St. Louis (9-0, 12-1), 42-7 and to Mililani (6-1, 8-5), 34-0.
If you’re keeping track, that amounted to a 144-40 deficit against the teams on Oahu that KS-Kapalama needs to compete against.
When Drummondo attended high school there, they lost to Saint Louis in the state tournament, the only consolation being that Saint Louis went on to win the championship. Losing to a better team is cold comfort, because for all the talk about giving it your best and all that, you still got beat.
Since he graduated, Drummondo’s alma mater won titles in 2004 and 2009, but the Warriors have been on the outside looking in ever since, and the former Hilo coach wants to be part of changing all that.
Even for those of us who never put money down on sports, it seems a reasonable wager that, barring a complete turnaround and victories over those top teams, at this time next year, Kaeo Drummondo could be the head coach at KS-Kapalama.
If he’s still coaching high school, that is.
“It’s a great opportunity,” he said of the new offer, “and to get involved with this kind of challenge at your alma mater, I couldn’t say no. People know I have aspirations, this is what I plan to do the rest of my life. I want my career to be a football coach, a good one, and I want to be in college coaching, but this opportunity just felt right to me.”
Other rumors since the end of the season suggested former University of Hawaii Coach Nick Rolovich might have had an interest in Drummondo on his new staff at Washington State and that new ‘Bows coach Todd Graham might also be interested, but both schools posted notices that their staffs have been filled and Drummondo was still in Hilo.
Hence, the move to Oahu.
“I loved my time in Hilo,” Drummondo said, “wherever I go, it will always be a part of me. Those teams, the kids we had and how they all bought in to do the hard work required? You can never forget those things, not to mention that I still have family (in Hilo), my kids were born here, we had some real success.
“My kids grew up on the Hilo football field, it’s my wife’s alma mater, but you gotta do what you gotta do, and you’re blessed if you get to do what you love — I love coaching football and (Ma’afala) knows my goal is to one day get to the college level on the mainland. I’m open about that, but I know to get there, I have to work on it day-to-day.
“It’s the same exact thing I tell my players,” he said. “Every day, every single day in football, you have an opportunity to come in and make yourself a better player than you were the day before — you have that opportunity. It’s a matter of who’s going to take that opportunity and who’s looking at it as a burden. I want every opportunity I can get to be better at what I do.”
There is no question the challenge at KS-Kapalama is a level or two above Hilo, if only because of the competition against which he’ll be measured. But you never get better by punching down. You have to punch up, and make it happen.
“You don’t have another choice if you want to be successful,” Drummondo said. “It takes hard work, it takes a work ethic that is maybe a little more than the next guy and at the end of the day, it’s really on you — did you put in the work, did you hit a level of communication with your players that they understand what they need to do to get better and they’re motivated to do it?
“That’s what’s in front of me now,” he said, “and it’s a great feeling to have, to know you have a chance to make things better somewhere.”
He’ll be jumping in to the new job right away, the family will move on over to Oahu after school is out and the family knows this probably won’t be the last move.
“If I have my choice,” he said, “the game will never leave me and I’ll never leave the game, it’s who I am.”
Don’t forget the name, he’s going places.
Next stop, Kamehameha-Kapalama.
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