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Wednesday, September 6, 2000
Lady and the An old sign flaps in the dusty Waialua breeze, boasting of "The World's Best Sugar."
ironmen
With the help of its athletic
director, the football program at
Waialua is alive and well
Kroeger new coach at Kamehameha
By Dave Reardon
Star-BulletinThe sign is obsolete. The mill's been closed since 1996.
The area's pineapple industry isn't what it used to be either.
But in the style of its humble yet tenacious residents, the small North Shore town fights on. Waialua quietly makes a go of it these days by growing coffee.
Just a couple blocks away from the mill -- which also means halfway across town -- sits the intermediate and high school.
"I worked in the pineapple fields, so this is like home for me," says Sharon Yoshimura, the Waialua athletic director who grew up in nearby Wahiawa.
About 800 teen-agers still attend a school that some predicted wouldn't survive the turn of the millennium.
The Bulldogs are making it. And so is their football team, against all odds. It was saved in an effort led by former Waialua cheerleader Sati Ulii, retired Bulldogs coach George Watanabe and the only female athletic director in the Oahu Interscholastic Association -- Yoshimura.
Two years ago only 17 players signed up for football, and the league made plans for its first drop out of a team in its 58-year history. Waialua football -- winner of six league titles in the 1940s and '50s -- would be no more.
Ulii and others recruited 10 more players. Watanabe returned to coach them. Yoshimura worked with the community and the league to keep the Bulldogs' heart beating.
"It's been a hard struggle, but I think we've made it," Yoshimura said.
Last season, Waialua even won a game -- something that hadn't happened in three years.
"It felt like we won a championship, the way everyone was yelling and jumping around," quarterback Randall Isomura said.
This year the Bulldogs have 24 players on the varsity roster. They lost their regular-season opening game last week to Kaiser, 39-20, but look forward to Friday when they travel to Radford.
And Yoshimura proudly points out that the junior varsity team is 2-0, indicating the program might have a healthy future.
It's being done on the terms of the coaches and administration. When players missed practices or broke rules in the past, they weren't always disciplined, for fear they might quit, Yoshimura said. That has changed."Every year we're stepping it up a little more," she said. "We have boys we tell to come back later, when they're ready to follow the rules."
Second-year coach Don Capello also stresses discipline and commitment.
"We've set higher standards, made it a privilege to play football," Capello said. "We've got more quality kids. Not necessarily athletes, but they're good character people."
Part of that is the mental and physical toughness to play the entire game against bigger, stronger players who don't have to play offense and defense as do the Bulldogs.
"It takes a different kind of player to make it here. If you can play here, you can play anywhere," senior Ikaika Lean said. "We don't have the luxury of 100 guys. What you've got is what you've got."
Isomura played nearly the entire game Friday -- at quarterback, wide receiver, both safety positions and every special team. He missed three plays in the fourth quarter, only because of a cramp.
"Yeah, ironman football is hard to do, but we have to do it because it's all we've got," he said.
Isomura is different at Waialua, and not only because he is 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, gargantuan for a Bulldog football player.
While other athletes who live in the Waialua district have fled to compete at big schools like Kahuku and Leilehua, Isomura is a transfer from McKinley, a large school in town.
Isomura's father, also named Randall, lost his battle with cancer on April 2, 1999. The son moved to Waialua to live with his uncle, Alvin Foster.
McKinley is heavily favored to win the OIA White Division, the same division in which Waialua struggles to win a game.
But Isomura has no regrets.
"This team is like a family," he said. "At McKinley, you might know only half the team, offense or defense, because there are so many guys."
Isomura knows he has 23 brothers to go to battle with on Friday nights, to share the pain and pride of ironman football.
Through it all the Bulldogs have learned if you fight for something hard enough, even little guys can beat the odds. And in their hearts they know they will win again, like their grandfathers did 50 years ago.
Still, even without winning, even without the sugar mill, they all know football in Waialua can be sweet.
"To the outsider, it might look like a huge mountain," Capello said. "But we're in here for the long run. Win, lose, or draw, these kids will be champions."