It never occurs to high school football players until it happens for the first time, and it’s the sweetest feeling, however fleeting it may be.
All your buddies from other schools have hung up their shoulder pads, turned in their helmets and had their last team meetings until next year, except for the seniors, many of whom will never again play a competitive game. Not everybody gets to play college football, but for a select few high schoolers, the season is still alive.
It’s championship week in the BIIF, when on Saturday the four survivors of the season will play for a title and memories they will one day relate to their grandchildren.
Honokaa heads to Kamehameha for a 5 p.m. Division II title meeting that will precede a 7 p.m. game when Konawaena hosts Hilo, with winners of each headed to Oahu next week for the state tournament.
“Who’s favored?” asked Honokaa coach Fred Lau. “It’s 50-50, right? Who still wants to play? Who still wants to prepare for this? It’s fun, because we each won one game against each other this year, and I think both (teams) know, we have good team and they have a good team.
“We have everyone’s attention right now,” he said. “We’re seeing players helping each other out maybe more than usual, guys are encouraging each other, spreading our message that we preach all the time.”
The message? Do your job. YouTube has videos by that name from Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots. It’s his mantra, and it is every bit as meaningful in high school — maybe more — as it is in the National Football League.
High school players are just learning the lesson. On some teams, there’s a wide gap in talent from the top five to the bottom five players, and it’s challenging not to get off a block a little early to help the guy next to you block his man. Still, Job One, as they say, is for each player to take care of his own business.
“At this point,” Lau said, “you’re not trying too much new stuff, what you need to do is to go back and clean up the fundamentals, pay attention to what we’ve been working on all year, what they’ve seen on (game) film that made clear what they need to work on.
“You want to play fundamentally sound ball probably more now than at any time in the season.”
For the teams that get this far, there has been some buy-in all along.
“At this point,” said Hilo coach Ed Rocha, “it means you probably have a team that is pretty much well disciplined on and off the field. I hear the talk among themselves, they are helping each other, being supportive, it’s an ‘I got your back’ kind of approach and that’s good to see.
“I’ve reminded them, it’s their hard work and discipline that got them this far, and they get that, everyone’s pulling together.”
You’ve heard the cliche before, about the football team being a family, and there’s at least a grain of truth in that.
“We preach three priorities — family, school, and number three is football,” Rocha said. “It happens that way because we want the best of them at practice, so if you’re taking care of home, with mom, dad and siblings, that matters. You can’t be out on the field stressed out by how mom gets on them about their homework, how dad gets after them about doing chores, you need to take care of those things so you have a clear mind for football.
“We just gotta be honest with them about that stuff,” he said, “but it’s not just us coaches talking, they have to meet us halfway, they have to do the work at home and at school, it’s about all of that and the teams that do those things well are probably the ones playing for championships.”
This is Rocha’s 45th year of coaching, and there’s no end in sight. This is what he does, what he wants to do.
He won a championship on the staff at Waiakea in 2001, but this is first title shot as a head coach.
“You want to make it the best showing that you can,” he said. “You want to give it your best shot.”
That goes for all four teams that will line up on Saturday and play for a lifetime of memories.