Sports Watch
How can it ever forget, considering Eldredge coached 87 Buffanblu football, basketball and baseball teams at all levels for a total of 765 victories against only 211 losses and 11 ties. That's a .784 winning percentage.
Eldredge coached the Punahou football varsity for 13 years, compiling a 105-38-4 record while winning four Interscholastic League of Honolulu championships.
In varsity baseball, Eldredge's teams won three ILH and two state titles. His only two losing seasons in 40 years of coaching at Punahou came in varsity football.
But for Eldredge, who also handled the school's Hawaiiana program for the last 15 years, winning isn't everything. He's more proud of what his players eventually accomplished in life - long after the final gun, buzzer or out.
Perhaps no one put it better than one of his former baseball players, Jim Scott (Class of 1970).
"He is intimidating now. Imagine how intimidating he was to a 13-year-old (like me)," Scott recalled. Even at that tender age Scott remembered Eldredge asking him, "Where do you want to go to college?"
Putting visions of the future into young minds was what Eldredge did best, despite his gaudy won-lost record in athletics.
It obviously worked for Scott, who eventually not only won a letter in varsity baseball. He became the school's president.
Punahou always prides itself for its sense of family and the Eldredge family is inextricably linked with Punahou's.
THE retiring coach is David Pinkham Kaiana Eldredge III, or just Dave. His father is David Pinkham Kaiana Eldredge II, known as "Pop" to everyone.
Except for "Pop," all of the Eldredges graduated from Punahou with Dave coming out of the Class of 1949. His brother, "Pal," is a member of the Class of '64 and his son, David IV or "Boy," Class of '79.
A Maui native, Eldredge went to Punahou because his late mother, Leilehua, of the local Judd family, was an alumna, Class of 1926.
It was during his junior year at Punahou that Eldredge played in his most memorable football game. "Everyone remembers that game," Eldredge says ruefully.
Playing safety, Eldredge batted a desperation, fourth-down pass in the end zone only to have a Farrington player catch the deflected ball at a goal-line for the winning touchdown. It cost Punahou the championship.
After graduating from Stanford, Eldredge returned to his alma mater in 1956 as a science and math teacher. He coached Punahou's JV football team to unbeaten seasons in his first two years.
He took over as the head varsity coach in 1959 and won the ILH crown his first year. After Kamehameha won in 1960, Punahou won it again in 1961 with what Eldredge considers to be his best football team.
ELDREDGE went on sabbatical in 1962 to get his master's degree at San Francisco State and came back for his second stint as head football coach from 1968-1976, winning back-to-back titles in 1970 and '71.
He has had an array of outstanding athletes at Punahou. But the best football player he ever coached, according to Eldredge, was running back Mosi Tatupu, who went on to play for Southern Cal and the New England Patriots. "I liked his attitude. He'd run over a guy and then come back and help him up," Eldredge said.
"I've been blessed with the kids and the support I've had at Punahou," says Eldredge, who plans to do things he and his wife, Jean, never had time to do. Foremost is traveling.
Eldredge still hopes to do some volunteer coaching on the community level when he retires in Mililani. "They haven't got rid of me yet," he said.