Welcome! Freshmen and Transfers!
SAINT LOUIS 00 10 13 07 — 30
KAHUKU 03 03 14 14 — 34
The Hawaii Open Division State Tournament final had been a monster hit, pulling in a 23.4% viewership rating.
Kahuku High School, the winner on that stage, had of course completed its obligations weeks earlier.
Namely:
Applying to the high school national championship.
Every football team that finished as its state's champion — or came within a single loss on the season — sends paperwork to the NFHS (National Federation of State High School Associations) declaring its participation in the national championship rankings.
The NFHS then runs what it insists on calling a "fair and impartial review," and notifies each school of the results in December.
The announcement comes roughly a month after Thanksgiving, every single year.
Which means.
Today is the day.
"This ruling is a steaming pile of crap."
#. December 19, 2016
#-1. United States, Oahu, Hawaii
#-2. Honolulu, Kahuku CDP
#-3. Kahuku High School
#-4. Football Field, Head Coach's Office
The reason Gavin Travis was foaming at the mouth was simple: the NFHS had ranked Kahuku nineteenth in the nation.
Granted.
It was an extraordinarily high ranking.
Nineteenth, out of 15,810 high school teams.
Year after year, Hawaii teams — no matter how gaudy their records — could never crack the Top 25. Only Saint Louis had ever managed it, putting its name in the Top 15 on six occasions in the past.
Gavin Travis had privately dreamed of surpassing that.
So the results were hard for him to swallow.
"There's nothing we can do, Coach."
"He's right, Gavin. We're in Hawaii. And we're public."
"They're wrecking public education everywhere you look! And then they turn around and stand on stage yapping about how we need to save it. Rot in hell, every last one of them!"
High school and college athletics officials across the country — along with the principals of the schools themselves — know exactly what the two most corrupt organizations in the world are.
The NFHS.
And.
The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association).
These bodies rake in colossal sums off the backs of students, yet refuse to distribute a single cent of the revenue on the grounds that the earners are just students.
Worse, when it comes to things like determining these rankings, they reveal themselves to be deeply political and utterly consumed by greed.
Bishop Gorman going undefeated at 15-0 and claiming the national No. 1 spot again this year? Understandable.
But St. John Bosco at No. 2 (13-2).
And St. Thomas Aquinas at No. 6 (13-2).
Those were incomprehensible.
If the system worked at all, the No. 2 spot should have belonged to Grayson of Georgia, who went 14-1.
"They can't be number two! Why? Because they're public!"
Every year, hordes of private high schools lean on their connections and quietly lobby the NFHS.
They know perfectly well that the December rankings determine the caliber of the following year's recruiting class — and that recruiting, in turn, feeds the pipeline of talented players, which feeds the win column.
But.
Public schools can't do any of that.
They don't have the money.
To be fair, Kahuku did earn revenue selling Moi's jerseys through channels the NFHS had officially sanctioned.
Even so, 36.4 percent of that revenue flowed straight to the NFHS.
And in return — not one thing.
Absurdity, incarnate.
And yet — untouchable, sacred ground.
Nobody dares poke that hornet's nest.
Because to do so would mean taking on the entire country.
"Whew—"
At last, Gavin Travis calmed himself down and realized that accepting the result and spinning it positively was the only sane move.
They were Top 25, after all.
Parents of high schoolers all over Hawaii were already calling to ask whether their sons could suit up for Kahuku next year.
The wide receiver the coaches had been eyeing had confirmed his enrollment, too.
Kahuku was only going to get stronger from here.
Because of the quarterback who'd be a sophomore next season.
Which meant the coaches had to raise their game as well.
If they hoped not to squander a gift that bordered on divine providence.
"Either way, we've got a golden egg in our hands."
"We thought it was a Stone, and it turned out to be gold."
"Haha. I like that one."
Not Stone — Gold.
Dwayne Moi Stone.
With the 2016 season now behind them,
the Kahuku football team was already preparing for the year ahead.
#. December 24, 2016
#-1. United States, Maui, Hawaii
#-2. Paia
Hawaii state champions.
Ranked nineteenth in the nation.
That much was pretty—
No, it was an immensely satisfying result.
Even the coaches who'd spent the entire finals period wrangling the team's problem children were humming to themselves the moment next season came up.
Proof that the recruiting was going well.
And naturally, that was good news for me too.
"How long are you staying?"
"Until the break ends."
"Wonderful. The place will be lively again."
"Though the restaurant did lose its sign, I suppose."
"Haha. Look at you, cracking jokes now?"
My great-aunt chuckled and bustled off toward the kitchen.
I had arrived in Paia that very morning.
The night before, we'd thrown a massive party to celebrate the end of the fall semester — and it had been an absolute disaster, in the most literal sense.
Alcohol.
Cigarettes.
Drugs.
Things that absolutely had no business being there but were simply unavoidable at a high school party made their appearance, and when I saw a few kids completely out of their minds, I quietly called two of the teachers.
If I'd just slipped out alone, I'd have been branded a traitor.
But leaving things as they were didn't sit right with me either.
So right around the time the guys had had their fill of fun, I became the whistleblower.
Since I went through Tamati, there was no risk of being found out.
I trusted that man more than anyone.
Truth be told, in my past life, I'd done a bit of drinking and drugging in high school myself.
I didn't come to my senses until I got to college.
What was it that changed me, again?
I can't quite remember that either.
Anyway.
Head Coach Gavin Travis — who had come sprinting over in his pajamas in the small hours of the morning — rounded up every football player present and chewed us out six ways to Sunday.
I was just about the only one stone-cold sober.
Everyone else was pickled on booze or worse.
The look on Coach's face when he saw me standing there, perfectly fine, was—
how do I put it. Like a drowning man who'd spotted a lifeline.
Well.
I wasn't at an age to be pulling stupid stunts anyway.
And I know exactly how bad that stuff is for you.
Especially for a football player.
"I'll head straight over to the restaurant, then."
"Not going to rest up a little more?"
"I'm in great shape. Honestly, I've got energy to burn."
"Really? What about training?"
"I've been resting since finals. I'll take it easy until New Year's, and after that I'm going to look for a place to train around here."
"Diligent, aren't you."
"I'm going to play in the NFL, after all. Anyway, I'm off!"
From the finals period onward, Coach had banned not just practice but even the weight room.
He said there were things more important than football.
And I followed his lead.
High school and college football coaches don't just teach us the game — they're teachers who look after our academics, and mentors who show us how to live right.
Every morning they check, one by one, whether the team's problem kids actually showed up to class, and they keep an eye on lunches and homework too.
Some kids skip lunch entirely — usually the ones who are struggling at home, or who claim the cafeteria food tastes bad just to save face.
So that those kids could at least get proper nutrition, some of the coaches carried a few packed lunches with them every day.
Coach also had the boys over to his house on the regular.
To do homework together.
To study together.
And to eat dinner together.
I was one of the players who visited his place quite often.
And I loved the time I spent there.
I loved hearing the story of how a mainland-born coach fell head over heels for a Hawaii-born wife at first sight, and how he ended up putting down roots here just to keep from losing her.
The more stories I heard,
the more I fell in love with Kahuku.
Ding-a-ling—
Ding-a-ling—
"The great one has arrived!"
The moment I stepped into the restaurant shouting Now, I'm Here, every head in the room snapped toward the entrance.
A beat of stunned silence.
And then—
"MOI!!!"
"Moi's here!!"
"Goddamn!! Well, if it isn't you!!"
"Heyyy!! Moi's back!!"
With a roar, everyone came barreling toward me.
Not a single stranger in the bunch.
"Uncle Akoni, you've lost some weight, huh?"
"I TOLD you to quit smoking! I can smell it on you!"
"Oh-h! Those teeth? You finally got them fixed?"
"Well, I never! Nai'a! Is Lala doing all right?"
When I landed at Kahului Airport.
When I stepped off the bus.
Even when I stopped by the house.
Somehow, strangely, it never quite felt like I'd come back — but the moment I walked in here, it finally hit me that I was truly home.
For a good while, I was buried under a mountain of people.
I didn't get free until—
a good fifteen minutes or so had passed.
"Mom!"
"Welcome home. Want something to eat?"
"You know I do. Been waiting all day for it."
"Then sit yourself down. I'll bring it right out."
"No, I'm going to go help serve out front first."
"Working the second you walk through the door?"
"It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"
Mom always kept the restaurant open on the Eve, for the neighbors' sake.
Knowing how big her heart is, how could I just sit there?
Right?
"Long time no see! Still eating on credit these days?"
"Nah. Not anymore."
"Whoa. Something good must've happened, huh?"
"Got a job. Little company over in Kahului."
"Wow — good for you."
Paia may be a tourist town with a fair number of people doing comfortably for themselves, but as anywhere, there are those who aren't.
For their sake, Mom kept the restaurant open as often as she could.
And she let them eat on the tab, too.
Every so often, someone who'd run up a few hundred dollars would come back years later to pay it off, and those were the moments Mom treasured most.
My mother.
The person I respect most in this world.
Right up there with Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma.
"Want me to bring you another drink?"
After about ten minutes of serving tables, and signing autographs for the folks who asked, a plate of something delicious was waiting for me in the kitchen.
Ohhh—
How long has it been?
Whenever Mom went over to Oahu,
Grandma forbade me from cooking.
Cooking is work, she said.
How could you work, even at home?
So even when she came to cheer me on,
we ate out.
Or I ate Grandma's cooking.
Don't get me wrong — the meals Grandma puts on the table are delicious.
But for me, this is the best.
Soul Food.
I can feel my soul filling up.
"Want more?"
"Yes, please. Do you have mahimahi today?"
"Of course. Give me a moment."
"Then I'll head back out and serve some more."
At first it was just a matter of lending Mom a hand.
But honestly, from age five on, I think I enjoyed it.
Every Sunday, the football fanatics would roll in.
And helping them settle their wagers.
That earned me a surprisingly tidy bit of pocket money.
Plenty of games on the schedule today, too.
"What do you think of the four o'clock game later?"
"Which teams?"
"San Francisco. Los Angeles."
"Hmm... the 49ers take it."
"Good. I'll put my money there. Commission? The usual fifteen percent?"
"Nope. Forget it."
"Really?"
"Yes. I'm a football player now, remember?! Are you out of your mind?!"
Some people might say, it's just allowance money, what's the harm?
No, No, No, No.
Doesn't work that way.
Absolutely not.
Look at a football player who rises into the ranks of the local stars in high school, and his ending comes down to one of three things.
First: his shoulders swell up so far he starts strutting around like he's already a real star, he gets tangled up in one mess after another, bounces from school to school on transfers, and ends up at a community college full of regrets.
Second is even messier.
The expulsion-to-prison speedrun.
The express lane to saying goodbye to football forever.
And the last one: recognizing that he himself is a prime commodity — and being careful, careful, and careful again.
Which of the three you choose—
"Leave a nice fat tip for the waitresses."
"You got it."
For the me of right now.
It's the easiest thing in the world.
#. February 22, 2017
#-1. United States, Oahu, Hawaii
#-2. Honolulu, Kahuku CDP
#-3. Kahuku High School
About a month into the winter term, the rumors start circulating through the football team.
Who's getting cut from the roster.
Who's coming up as a freshman.
And who's transferring in.
Right now, it's the last of those.
Transfer students.
"Who?"
"Enoch Nawahine. You don't know him?"
How would I?
I'm not a local around here.
So I don't know the Oahu kids.
"He played at Punahou."
"In Honolulu?"
"Yeah. That's a private school, so it's in the ILH division — he's a running back who played there. Kid can really run. Junior right now, senior in the fall."
With next season on the horizon,
the position the coaches agonized over most was running back.
Because Harmon and Elvis were both graduating seniors.
And truth be told.
For a team whose tactics leaned so heavily on the run,
our running back situation had been woefully thin.
Harmon's knee buckled in the very first game of the season, and he was never at full strength after that, while Elvis could look brilliant one snap and, on the next, put on a performance so bad the criticism wrote itself.
This team.
Needs a steady running back.
"Damn. He can run, huh? And he's got size too."
"Six feet even."
"Oh! And quick on top of that. I like him."
Coach wanted me and Sekope to anchor the team next year.
Defense, he said, was still under consideration.
Anyway.
That was why the two of us kept getting summoned to the coach's office and elsewhere, hashing out next year's roster at length.
We did watch film on a few candidates.
But for running back — this kid was the best.
"107 carries for 839 yards and 11 touchdowns."
"Whew— that's outstanding? And those are ILH numbers."
"Yeah."
The private division runs a higher level of competition than the public one.
The gap in talent from team to team is narrower, too.
So you have to factor in that the numbers come out lower.
There's the matter of schemes as well.
Last year, Kahuku's No. 01 running back was Elvis. The kid racked up 152 total carries for 1,091 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Elvis has him beat on volume and scoring.
But on yards per carry, this kid is clearly ahead.
"Sounds like they're cleaning house at receiver too."
"They'd better."
The team's wide receivers had been genuinely bad.
Unwatchable, frankly.
We had Royce Pao, sure — but he's a graduating senior.
The fact that Coach built his strategy around the run rather than the pass owed a great deal to circumstances he couldn't control.
But.
Apparently this side of the roster was due for a big shakeup too.
No concrete names yet.
Just the kind of rumor that spreads on its own.
"Oh, and I've got news of my own."
"What is it?"
Sitaleki Tongi — the guy who'd been ready to trade football for the SAT — had stunned everyone by deciding to stay on the team after all.
And not only that.
"He's asking to be worked into practices."
"For real?"
"Yeah."
After I'd hounded him and sweet-talked him endlessly without budging him an inch, now he was the one saying he wanted to join our training.
I don't know what changed his mind.
But one thing was certain: he wanted to play football.
The only reason he'd been about to quit in the first place was the college scholarship thing.
For now, I'd told him okay.
There was no reason to say no.
"Next year, we might really be onto something."
"That's what I'm saying, Dogg!!"
"We're going undefeated."
"Kek kek kek. Time to grind the mainland boys' faces into the dirt."
I've said it before, but.
From winter through April, the field belongs to the coaches.
The recruiting has to get done in this window,
so that we can start preparing in May.
And since there's no such thing as summer vacation for us football players anyway, I'm waiting for June with a spring in my step.
"Oh, and one more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Let's change a tradition."
"How so?"
Coach had named Sekope team captain for next year.
And me, vice-captain.
It was a decision made out of consideration — letting the kids who'd be seniors come fall set down the burden of leading the football team for a while, so they could focus purely on their studies and their college futures.
And it was an expression of trust in us, too.
Which is why, now, I intend—
to stamp out the team's bad old habits.
Unnecessary threats and intimidation.
No need for that kind of iron-fisted hazing either.
Instead.
"We make every single one of them join the Muscle Men."
"...Whoa."
Some people will tell you.
That excessive strength training is bad for a high schooler.
And part of that is true.
If you get hurt, the consequences are that much more devastating.
But one of the biggest reasons blue-chip high school prospects wash out in college is that they simply can't overcome the strength gap that greets them coming out of the NFHS and into the NCAA.
A weak head comes first, sure.
But the physical difference can't be ignored either.
And above all—
they're underclassmen. Which means we can bury them with pure physicality.
That's the angle I intend to exploit.
At the end of the day, the single biggest reason high school and college football players go off the rails is that they feel weak on the field.
The guys who are bigger. The guys who are stronger.
Standing in front of them, the kids with fragile minds drown in helplessness.
And they express that helplessness through self-destruction.
But if a freshman or a transfer experiences, on the field, the advantage that physical ability buys him — then instead of going astray, he'll throw himself twice as hard into training and into games.
There are countless examples of this.
In my past life.
And in this one.
And it ties directly into the atmosphere of the whole team.
We lived it ourselves last year.
So—
"Let's take it easy on them the first week."
"...Gulp."
"And then from the week after, we run them until they puke. What do you think? Killer, right? We keep it up until every one of those plastic bins they haul out there is brimming over with their vomit. Huh? Well? Whaddya say!"
"Good lord in heaven! Moi?"
"Yeah? What?"
"You're a straight-up demon."
"Screw you! It's fun, isn't it?!"
As a rule, football is brain.
And then muscle.
Training the mind is brutally hard to do after the fact.
Muscle, by comparison, is laughably easy.
"We're turning this place into a Muscle Men paradise!! Did I make myself clear?!"
"You insane bastard."
"I can hear every word, you know?!"
"I SAID it so you'd hear it!!"
"Heh heh heh."
Welcome!
Freshmen and transfers!
I'm going to spread both my arms wide,
and welcome them like kings.