Radford's resiliency paying off

Radford's Jeff Terry, left, coach Kelly Sur and Richard Kealoha.
Photo by Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin

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By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin

In 1995, Radford High School's football team was riding high through its most successful season in years. With a 4-0 record in the second week of October, the Rams could have clinched the Oahu Interscholastic Association Blue Conference championship with a home victory against 1-3 Waialua.

But then a nightmare struck the Halawa campus.

An oversight by athletic administration officials had allowed one of the Rams to play beyond his eligibility. Despite the fact that it was an honest oversight, the OIA required the Rams to forfeit all four victories.

"There were a lot of tears when I told the kids," said 36-year-old Radford head coach Kelly Sur.

"I felt like breaking out (crying)," said Chris Hogge, Radford's 6-foot-4, 270-pound guard. He was a sophomore then. "I just put my head down. I'd have understood if we'd have lost it on our own but we couldn't even control this."

Running back/inside linebacker Richard Kealoha said some key players thought about quitting but everyone decided to stay on.

The Rams were so devastated by the turn of events that they fell apart at the hands of Waialua that weekend and finished at 1-5.

"But Kelly didn't panic and he didn't point a finger at anybody," said Radford's longtime athletic director, Jim Alegre, who took blame for the mistake. "He just worked hard with the kids and showed them that life has to go on."

Go on, it has. And tonight at Kaiser High's homecoming, Radford has a chance to be a legit 4-0.

A win against the Cougars, who are also unbeaten, would be invaluable to the Rams, who will be home for their last two games.

They would be well-entrenched for their showdown the following weekend against a surprisingly strong Kaimuki team (3-1). The season would wrap up with a homecoming match against currently winless Waialua.

The Rams have a powerful 1-2 rushing punch in the slick and speedy Jeff Terry (who also plays cornerback) and the bruising Kealoha, who says, "I like to run over people."

"Rich is strong but I like to take the outside," said Terry, who averages 9.1 yards a carry.

What is also striking about the Radford squad is the feeling they have for Sur, a second-year football coach who has also been Radford's baseball coach since 1993.

"I never had a coach like him back in Virginia," said Terry, an Army dependent. "We're all equal in his eyes. He's a man with a good heart, and I'm going to miss him because he's like a father."

Hogge said Sur was the reason he wanted to play at Radford.

"I knew what he could do for the program because my brother played baseball for him," he said. "I knew something magical was going to happen under him."

Sur said he's lucky to have kids like Terry, Hogge and Kealoha, and an enthusiastically supportive principal like Bobby Stevens, who served as head football coach of the Rams in the mid-1980s.