Friday, August 13, 1999

Hammerheads’
ex-’Bows love that
winning feeling

Most of their memories from
UH days are of losses after
lopsided losses

By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin

Three weeks before June Jones opens a new era of Rainbow football, 18 players from the old era will make a last stand before the home fans.

For the ex-Rainbows on the Hawaii Hammerheads, beating the Mississippi Fire Dogs at Blaisdell Arena (7 p.m. tomorrow) and going on to play for the Indoor Professional Football League title in Texas next week would be redemption.

"The meaning of this game for us is respect," said tight end Gary Ellison.

"At UH, nobody ever respected us, and they still don't respect us yet in this league."

The Hammerheads are 10-6 after having played much of their season on mainland road trips and coming home to sparse crowds at the Blaisdell.

"We've had our fair share of losing and we're sick of that," said Hammerheads quarterback Tim Carey, another ex-Rainbow. "You don't always get a chance to redeem yourself. To bring a championship back here to Hawaii would be a lot of fun for us. "

If the Hammerheads can beat the Fire Dogs (9-7), they will travel to Austin, Texas, to face the regular-season champion Texas Terminators (12-4) on Aug. 21.

Two of the ex-Rainbows on the Hammerheads roster, Zac Odom and Peter Pale, recall what it was like to win in a bowl.

But the rest, like Ellison, recall only the decline of the university football program.

"There's more team unity here than we had at UH," said Ellison. "Our chemistry is a little better and that's why we win."

Defensive lineman Morrie Roe said he's glad to be in a locker room with the same faces he knew at Manoa. But he's glad the expressions have changed.

"There's definitely a whole different attitude," said Roe. "You go in the locker room and don't have to see those long faces. People want to play, and at UH people didn't want to play anymore after a while."

Offensive lineman Jerry Leaeno said "there's a hunger" among the ex-Rainbows on this Hammerheads team.

"These are like my brothers, and I can trust them all," said Leaeno, who left the Hawaii program in 1996.

Two-time All-WAC selection Eddie Klaneski, the best known of the ex-Rainbows, will be in action again tomorrow night. He sat out the last game of the regular season due to surgery on his thumb.

Klaneski, who along with teammate Chris Paogofie is a candidate for league MVP, is No. 2 in the league in all-purpose yardage.

The ex-Rainbows aren't the only Hammerheads with losing memories to erase.

"My last winning season was 1993 at Waialua High, when we took the Blue Division championship in the OIA," said defensive lineman Quinton Kanae.

Kanae and former Waialua teammate Leroy Lele (offensive lineman) both went to Eastern Arizona to play football. But the school's football team went 1-7 their first year and folded the next.

Last year, Kanae played on the 6-8 Hurricanes indoor team.

"Just about everybody on this team came from a losing program and that's one reason why we're winning now," said Kanae. "It's become our momentum."

But Kanae said that the Hammerheads had a hard time getting used to winning. There was an initial unwillingness among players to believe in what was happening.

"Some thought it was a fluke, and we'd go back to the way we were last year," he said. "But the coaches came down on us a little harder, everybody started practicing a little harder and guys like Chris (Paogofie) and Eddie (Klaneski) started stepping up. Everything just fell into place."

From the Mississippi angle, Fire Dogs head coach/quarterback John Fourcade said he doesn't expect to see the same team he beat in Biloxi (35-20) on July 17.

"In Mississippi, we beat them with a little change of defenses," said Fourcade, who once played for the New Orleans Saints. "And now, I think they're gonna come at us with something totally different offensively."

Fourcade plans to try to beat the Hammerheads with speed.

He said he expects a more physical game from the Hammerheads, considering that they are at home. "I think they'll try to do something with their running game," he said.

"But if we can take the crowd out of the game early, it won't mean anything."

Fourcade led the league with a pass rating of 104.0 (218 completions in 357 attempts for 34 touchdowns, 2,170 yards and 12 interceptions).