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Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
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11 psychos make up 1 crazy unit
"Everyone has some fear. A man without fear belongs in a mental institution -- or on special teams, either one."
-- Walt Michaels
THEY clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. Some of them hop, hop, hop, hop, the testosterone and adrenaline too much to contain. And then the audience is clapping and hopping and the anticipation is rising and building and then the whistle blows. And then Dan Kelly raises his arm in the air.
And then they run. They run into danger. Running toward glory.
All of them, 11 psychos, picking up speed.
"We always say that we're crazy," Rustin Saole says.
"You want to go down there pretty much like you're trying to kill somebody," Guyton Galdeira says.
"It's the only play we really get to go in," Saole says, "so we make the most of it."
It's the (real) "starting defense," Michael Malala says.
Yes, welcome to the Hawaii kickoff team. Welcome to the jungle. Welcome to Thunderdome, Aloha Stadium style.
And they run down, the 11 of them, and they hit someone, anyone, everyone, colliding at a high rate of speed. The crashes are spectacular, sometimes in a good way, sometimes bad, depending on which end of them you end up on. But always explosive. Always huge.
And then the play is over, and guys are pushing and shouting and celebrating and bouncing and talking, quite often, in some kind of near fight. ("It's more the backups so when they get in, it's that one play that they get," Malala explains. "So when they get in they're going to go down and talk and get riled up and get fired up.") And in the middle of it, almost always, believe it or not, is Kelly. The kicker.
He even made a tackle last week.
"Are you sure he made the tackle?" June Jones says.
Yes, Coach, yes. That's how crazy it's getting, out there.
That's what happens after the clapping, after the arm is raised and that whistle blows, and they run.
It's like jumping out of a plane, this job. It's exhilarating. It's insane. You will crash back to Earth. That's coming, and everybody knows it, they all do. The only question is how hard -- and who you're taking with you, along the way.
"We gotta go down with a vengeance," Saole says.
Yes, but then come the collisions, crazy ones, full speed, at the end of a 40-yard dash. Galdeira, he's -- what? -- 5-7, 163? (Maybe.) He's crushed and been crushed, been on both ends of it, both windshield and bug. Malala once spectacularly leapt over the return team's "wedge," flipping in midair, taking out the ballcarrier with a foot to the head on a flying kick. It's crazy, out there.
And yet they use words
like "discipline," and "responsibility" and "job." Malala is such a nice, polite, pleasant young man. Galdeira was on the honor roll at Kamehameha. So was Saole at Waipahu -- he was in the Dr. Seuss Reading Club!
This is football. They are psycho and cerebral both.
Galdeira's great solo tackle at the 14 last week? It was insanity. It was also intelligent design.
"We study film on it now," Malala says. "Before we used to look at film a couple of times a week. Now we look at it almost every day."
They are a unit. They are a team. This is their identity. This is what they do. This is who they are. They are the kickoff team. This is a very, very, very big deal.
"People want to be on it," Malala says.
Galdeira wanted to be on it. He had to do some convincing. Coaches love underdog stories in the movies, but they tend to be leery when it's on their own watch. Still, Galdeira talked his way onto the field, a tryout, one play. "I ran down and ended up blowing some people up, pretty much," he says, and Saole laughs, the kind of delicious giggle football players can't help but lapse into when talking about big hits. They are teammates, in this together, sharing in it all.
"We go in there, we're going to eat these guys alive, ah?" Galdeira says. "That's what we talk about before every time we run down."
That's what they do. The offense scores. The defense stops. The kickoff team does this. It starts the insanity, sets the tone.
One play. Their play.
They are cool now. They are stars now. Michael Lafaele, the 340-pound nosetackle's nosetackle (Jones calls him the best pound-for-pound player on the team), is in on their huddles, during games, like a booster who wants to slap shoulders and hang out by the bench. Their own teammates are fans. Quarterbacks, receivers.
"It gets them excited," Malala says.
Even the kicker wants in, pushing, shouting. Even hitting. He's crazy, too.
"It's a mentality," Galdeira says. "That's the way it is. That's how we all are. What do you call that?
"It's infectious," he says.