IF the Oahu Interscholastic Association football playoffs were a video game, the Campbell High School Sabers would never lose. Hernandez soups up Campbell
Darren Hernandez wasn't beating his assistant coaches with his favorite Chicago Bears enough, so he took the game home and reprogrammed it.
"He souped up the Bears and changed the names of the players to guys who play for Campbell," line coach Mark Gardner said. "Now you can't beat him with his souped up Bears, I mean Sabers. He's competitive as hell, but he has a sense of humor."
Campbell meets the McKinley Tigers -- not the Green Bay Packers -- this weekend in the playoffs. Programming a real-life high school football team is a lot more involved than a computer game.
And when you're competing with youth gangs for your players, it's a never-ending job. But Hernandez, who says he bleeds Campbell orange and black, excels at it.
He says there are about 20 gangs at Campbell. Fortunately, the largest, strongest and best-led is the football team.
"People join gangs because they want to belong to something," Hernandez said. "If they can belong to the football team, with the family we have, we feel that's a better deal."
And more fun than Hernandez' playing days in the early 1980s. The Sabers were winless in his four years.
"We had one tie, but a melee broke out on the field at the end of the game," he said. "I didn't participate. I was disgusted."
NOT that Hernandez didn't enjoy mixing it up.
"I played defensive line, and the scary thing is, I don't recall ever trying to make a tackle. All I did was have a little personal war, hitting the guy playing across from me. I didn't even care if the ball carrier ran right by me. Everybody on our team was doing that. We had no continuity, no bonding."
Hernandez says the Sabers were the furthest thing from a team. He's changed that in his four years as varsity head coach, instilling a sense of tradition (10 coaches are Campbell graduates) and discipline (six teach at the Ewa Beach school).
You want continuity? All Campbell coaches work with varsity and junior varsity players. That means that Hernandez, who is also the quarterback coach, has tutored senior starter Rodney Tavui for four years.
Of course, winning helps, too. The Sabers (6-1) are the Red Division champion, with the season highlight a stunning victory at Waianae three weeks ago.
In exchange for team membership, Hernandez asks the kids for only one thing -- everything they've got. On and off the field.
"We tell them if you work super hard and do your best, you'll find success -- and not just in football," said Hernandez, who teaches world history, consumer economics and literature. "If you're going to do a research paper and you slap together a piece of crap, it shows you have no pride in what you do. It sounds like a simple thing, but we have to teach them that people judge them by what they do."
SEVERAL starters were held out of the 19-6 victory over Pearl City last week for violating team rules. If you miss practice, for whatever reason, you don't start.
"Dependability beats ability," Hernandez says.
There's never a doubt his word is law in Campbell football country. The avid weightlifter is fierce in appearance, with a shaved head and full beard.
He also is extremely articulate, and not just because his Harvard-educated wife Brenda's smarts have rubbed off on him.
"I used to love reading football cards and comic books as a kid," he said. "If I didn't understand a word I would look it up."
"He knows crazy stuff like who the inventor of the forward pass is," Gardner said.
Getting the Sabers on track was no trivial pursuit. But Darren Hernandez has both Campbell football programs going strong -- the computer version and the real thing.
Dave Reardon is a magazine editor and freelance
writer who has covered Hawaii sports since 1977.
He can be reached via the Star-Bulletin or
by email at dreardon@hmsa.com.
