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By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
The annual Thanksgiving "Turkey Bowl" mud bath is played on this
Kalihi Uka Community Park field. Maryrose McClelland, neighborhood
board chairwoman, shows the dry field. The Parks Department has
ensured the water will stay turned off this year.

‘Turkey bowl’
mud-football game
dried up

Kalihi residents say the game
renders the field too damaged
for them to use

---

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

Kalihi's unofficial, generations-old Thanksgiving Day football game traditionally played in the mud is scheduled to be a washout this year. Not because funds have dried up, but because the water supply has -- or will be.

Without the water, there's no way for participants to slip-slide their way to a touchdown in the annual "Turkey Bowl" mud bath at Kalihi-Uka Community Park.

The Kalihi Valley Neighborhood Board wants the tap turned off because of damage to the grass.

Although an attempt to stop the game last year failed, it definitely will be out this year, vowed Maryrose McClelland, chairwoman of the neighborhood board. For decades, mostly young men "have flooded the field and played that football game," she said. It's regular tackle football, but without uniforms or padding.

"People actually come with picnic goodies and coolers," McClelland said.

But by game's end, the turf is damaged, making it unsafe for children to play there, she said.

"In the old days, the sprinkler heads used to get broken," as well, McClelland said. "I don't know what they're doing with sprinkler heads now, but we cannot keep repairing the turf."

"Most people here (in the immediate neighborhood) don't participate, and if they do participate, they're not going to speak up," McClelland said, noting, "This is an illegal use of water."

The city thinks so, too.

No permit has been issued for the "Turkey Bowl," said Bill Balfour, director of the city Department of Parks and Recreation. The department has checked with the Board of Water Supply to make sure all water sources at or near the field are turned off this year, and it has alerted police to the situation.

Balfour didn't have a cost estimate for restoring the field after one of the muddy games.

"That field is Bermuda grass as most fields are, and it has a great resiliency," he said. "What would have to happen is we would have to water and fertilize, and it does take a while for the field to come back. The real cost would be in lack of community use of the field."

It's unknown how or when the mud game started, but it's been going "since I was little," McClelland said. "Over generations, we've had this occur."

Last Thanksgiving, she counted 36 spectators.

"I was flabbergasted," she said, because the neighborhood board had tried to stop it.

"We turned off the water from the street to the park," McClelland said. "There's a water main in the street, so that was turned off."

But undeterred participants tapped into adjacent Kalihi-Uka School, using five garden hoses.

"They used the water spigot from the school and the five water hoses all affixed to each other -- taped to each other," McClelland said. "The hoses went out to the field, and that's how they soaked the field last year."

McClelland said the first time, police were called to the scene, and "officers were watching the game." After a second call to dispatch, the officers eventually went on the field and stopped the game before too much damage was done, she said.