Sidelines
KAHUKU should win the state football championship. Nobody should be surprised if the Red Raiders do it again. We should expect it. The best players are with Kahuku, the most talent, the most speed, the momentum of having done it before. Kahuku is overwhelming, and explosive, and better than the bunch that won it all last year. They've got all the weapons to play a perfect game in fast-forward. Lee, Crusaders
are no underdogs
in state finalOnly one problem. The Red Raiders aren't putting it all together. They fumble, they jump offside, they make mistakes, they stop themselves. They're sometimes brilliant, other times bumbling. And all year long, it hasn't mattered. Against most teams, it doesn't matter. Kahuku's too good. So good, Kahuku can't even contain Kahuku.
But all that uneven play haunts them now, hangs over them in the playoffs with St. Louis looming and everything on the line. It matters now. You can't just cruise through a season, win without breaking a sweat, then snap your fingers to step it up a notch. And they're finding that out the hard way.
They're hitting the "turbo" and ... nothing happens. They couldn't run on Lahainaluna, where the entire team weighed 160 pounds and went both ways.
(Yes, they ran away from the Lunas, passing and tricking and sprinting to a giant, impressive-looking lead in the first round of the state playoffs. But they couldn't run the ball up the gut, couldn't power the ball when they needed to, even with 300-pounder after 300-pounder on their line and wrecking balls in the backfield. If you are Kahuku, and you can't run on a bunch of 160-pound guys, all cylinders aren't quite firing.)
The Waimea game was even tougher, with those scrappy Menehunes from Kauai giving Kahuku perhaps its closest shave since Skyline. Now, those guys have heart, and play hard, and Waimea should be ranked No. 3 at the end of the year in anybody's poll. I love public school, neighbor island Cinderella stories more than anyone. Take nothing away from them. You don't want to play Waimea.
And a win is a win is a win, as June Jones took a second to remind me one day. Style points and margin of victory don't mean a thing. It all counts the same.
But is Kahuku peaking at the right time? Doesn't look like it. Are they getting better at the end of the year? Doesn't look like it. Will they be ready? We'll have to wait and see what they show us. But they'd better be.
Because St. Louis will be.
Now, I'm not in the prediction business. You people who keep track of the "Football Fever" contest know this. (Last place. Last! Behind the guy picking his nose!)
But St. Louis is getting better, looking sharper each time out. St. Louis is playing into form. In the home stretch, St. Louis has a second wind. St. Louis looks like a team headed for destiny in the championship game.
Cal Lee is ready, the tiger is waiting. He has his team ready, just as it was for all those years. If it's close, St. Louis has what it takes to make that difference. Lee knows it. His team knows it.
I know it, you know it, and the American people know it.
It would be great to see the public schools take it all again, to hear the horns honking all the way up the windward coast. That would be the fairy tale.
Another fairy tale story line could be Cal Lee somehow pulling it out, plotting and scheming and coaching, willing, wringing one last unlikely victory out of the night. Lee getting a win in his final game in an upset special, to finally showcase his genius in the underdog's role.
But that's not the real picture. Cal Lee is no underdog. Right here, right now, tomorrow night, St. Louis is the favorite. It has to be.
Maybe Kahuku will hit the "turbo" and this time the playoff rocket boosters will roar to life. Maybe they will finally play that perfect game in fast-forward. They could. They should. They might.
But St. Louis will. St. Louis is the pick. St. Louis wins again.
Kalani Simpson's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
He can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com