Sports Watch
For me, it's easy. Golf course.
For those watching the TV weather report, Barbers Point is where it's always the hottest on Oahu.
For old-time football fans, Barbers Point was a team that the University of Hawaii Rainbows beat during the 1952 and '53 seasons when the military was active in senior league sports.
For the U.S. Navy, it's an air station that is going to be closed down in 1999 with much of the property being handed over to the state.
For Keith Kaneshiro, the outgoing city prosecutor who's going to head the state Department of Public Safety, Barbers Point is where he wants to put a minimum-security drug detention center.
Others are lobbying for a civil defense center, a recreational site or a place for the homeless. Like the weather out there, it's a hot topic.
For now, though, Barbers Point is home to 102 Rainbow football players who will be billeted there for 12 days of fall camp.
They began Day One of practice yesterday with morning and afternoon sessions under a broiling sun. But conditions weren't as intolerable as the players were led to believe.
It wasn't hotter than, say, Cooke Field, which was the regular training site until this season when new coach Fred vonAppen decided to hold it on a military base. VonAppen wanted his players to eat, sleep and think football 24 hours a day without any outside distractions.
It's lights out at 10:30 every night and leaving the camp means you're AWOL.
Faced with "a 4-8 team in transition," vonAppen has every reason to opt for a no-nonsense, boot-camp atmosphere because he'll need three-week wonders to get ready for the season opener on Aug. 31 against Boston College.
THIS season figures to be a war for vonAppen's Rainbows. No wonder they're like virtual prisoners of war until they break camp Aug. 23.
So maybe Kaneshiro has something when he says he wants to put a jail out there on the Ewa Plain. I mean, this place is really in the boonies. Why, it's even ewa of Ewa.
The Rainbow players might go stir crazy before it's over. After all, the 12-day stay is a long stretch without seeing your loved ones, going to a movie or cruisin' at Moose's.
But right now, nobody's complaining. Well, except maybe about the food.
"The food?," said sophomore wide receiver Dillan Micus. "Uh, it tastes like food. It's nutritional and it fills us up."
You can go back for seconds, but only after everyone is served. And you can't change your mind. Someone in the UH party had asked for mashed potatoes but wanted rice instead when he found out chili was being served. "You already have potatoes," he was told.
The dining area might be called a mess hall. But it doesn't refer to the dress code. No hats, tank tops, plain white T-shirts and slippers are allowed.
WHILE not the Ritz-Carlton, the players' rooms in the three-story cement barracks are hardly stalag-like.
Get this. Each room has two single beds, a television set with basic cable, a VCR, a small refrigerator and a coffee maker. Did I say it's also air conditioned?
There's even maid service.
But it's a sacrifice being away from the family, said quarterback Johnny Macon, one of the married players.
"It's rough, not to be able to go home and hug my daughter,"
Macon said. "But, overall, it's an ideal situation for the team. We have a full hectic day, but it's the things you have to do if you want to do good in Division I football. I'm glad we finally have someone making us do this type of thing."
Macon, though, wanted to make one thing perfectly clear. "It's not a prison," he said.