PAUL HONDA / PHONDA@STARBULLETIN.COM Above: Quinton Tang, Arnold Martinez and Stanford Leti in the newly-renovated locker room at Moanalua.

Menehune coach
stands tall

Arnold Martinez has given Moanalua
a reason to be proud of its football team

ittle more than two years ago, Arnold Martinez did not like what he saw.

His injury-plagued playing days at Cal well behind him, Martinez turned his obsession for football and his compulsion for detail into a mission. But that trek took an entirely different flavor with his first few steps into the Moanalua High School football locker room.

He did not like it. Not the look, nor the smell, nor the vibe. So, for 12 hours a day, he and his new staff blasted the place, inch by inch, cleaning and repainting until the walls and ceiling were flawless in white and blue.

That beginning was ultimately an omen of change to come.

Now in his third season at the helm, Martinez has seen his program mature on and off the field. Last week's league-opening win over Division II state champion Campbell isn't just cause for celebration.

Martinez believes it is a forecast of more good times to come for a program that has known the doldrums well when it comes to the gridiron.

Moanalua, 3-4 in the Oahu Interscholstatic Association White Conference last year, is in position to make a serious run at a league title this time. Nineteen returnees, including seven starters on offense and eight on defense, give the Menehunes their best squad in years.

PAUL HONDA / PHONDA@STARBULLETIN.COM Martinez gives a pep talk to the team after practice.

But mention Moanalua sports to the average fan, and images of baseball, girls volleyball and basketball stir up memories. Football, aside from a few sporadically successful seasons, has been out of the limelight for decades. That may be why football is slow to win over converts.

The public perception of Moanalua, fair or unfair, is that the Menehunes are built around two future college players in quarterback Quinton Tang and linebacker Stanford Leti.

Tang, a 5-11 1/2, 218-pounder, was last season's White Conference Defensive Player of the Year. He bench presses 315 pounds.

Leti, at 6-0 and 190 pounds, bench presses 320 and has a 29-inch vertical leap. A first-team pick last year, Leti is possibly the best option quarterback in the islands.

It's understandable that those kinds of numbers, and the play-making qualities of the two players, create a certain image -- that without those two, they are truly still a group of Menehunes putting up a good fight against bigger, stronger teams.

But the fact is, Moanalua upset Campbell, a team with a significantly bigger line and its entire backfield intact, with two-way starter Tang suffering through a good portion of the game with leg cramps.

"Our linemen know they don't have that luxury of being the biggest or strongest," Martinez said. "They think, 'In order for me to beat that 290-pound guy across from me, I have to have better technique. And I'm 5-9, 180 pounds.' We try to make it about who we are, to control every step we take. Those kids are grading out around 80 percent on their first-step move."

Don't bother asking Leti, a third-year starter at quarterback, about the perception.

"No, no way. If it wasn't for the other players, it wouldn't be about us," he said. "It's just that we like to make the big play."

Sometimes making the big play requires patience. Leti and Tang were just sophomores when the team's seniors voted them among the team's co-captains.

At the time, Moanalua football was in the midst of transition. Martinez had just finished doing the makeover on the locker room and an unfamiliar sense of change was in the air. Not everyone liked it.

"My senior year was Coach Martinez's first year," assistant coach Kamoe Mehrtens recalled. "Some of the seniors couldn't take it. The hard running. The organization. Some guys quit."

Mehrtens recalled a 45-minute video session one day.

Martinez, who videotapes practices, as well as games, had his players watch their own body language between plays.

The experience was an eye-opener for every player, including the two younger promising standouts.

In the two years since emerging as captains, Tang and Leti have defined dedication and encouragement. They work diligently in the weight room, running the bleachers, sometimes with Martinez lifting and running nearly pound-for-pound and stride-for-stride with them. The payoff has taken time, but the two grew into their roles as leaders.

"The funnest part is seeing the joy in those kids. Now it's, 'I know we're gonna do well,' not 'I hope.' Now I can see our guys support each other, giving each other a pat on the helmet, encouraging, and that wasn't going on two years ago," Martinez said.

One of the many philosophies Martinez brought to the culture of his program was a "Little Brother" mentorship. The staff picks 12 players to become player-coaches during the annual NFL summer camp for kids, hosted by the Menehune program.

That status carries over to the fall, where the 12 buddy up with junior varsity players.

"If our kids up from the JV don't do things they way they're supposed to, our player-coaches take them on the side and talk with them," Martinez said. "Our seniors love them, and that love is total respect. And the way they set the expectations for the younger kids without even telling them."

During a preseason scrimmage, Martinez removed a young player from the field for a mental error.

"I told him take a knee for 30 minutes," the coach said. Tang saw what was going on, and went straight to the player, taking a knee with him for the entire 30 minutes.

"He told me, 'Coach, you don't have to talk to him,'" Martinez recalled.

Martinez, 35, is from the old school, but does everything imaginable to employ new-school technique when it comes to family discipline. And he does treat the players like family, with enormous quantities of tough love.

"If I'm killing a guy, all over him about a mistake he makes over and over, I'll kill him with love," Martinez said. "I'll hug him while I'm killing him. I'll ask him to be at his best. I may be loud while I'm doing it, but they know it's a different way of doing it."

Tang and Leti are just two of Martinez's living disciples, testimonial proof that loud love works. Or rather, constant reminding. The penchant for teaching is one of Martinez's strengths, meshed with his relative quirks.

Among them, a ban on wearing the color red on campus. Why? Red is one of the colors worn by White Conference rival Radford. "Red's one of my favorite colors, too," Leti lamented. "I got red in my closet, but I can never wear it."

One lesson, of sorts, Martinez learned recently was to enjoy everything just a little more. Not an easy task for a man who times and grades everything in sight. "Coach has fun, but he's on the ball all the time. 'Do the right thing, all the time, with a purpose,'" Leti said, Martinez's words echoing in his cranium. "Every day for the last three years."

Leti, who expects to play safety in college, may coach one day. "I'd be more relaxed," he said, only half-kidding.

Perhaps no other Menehune has endured more repetition than Leti, who receives dozens of letters weekly from Division I schools. Among them, Michigan State has called. Leti's 4.6 time in the 40 at USC's camp, along with his strength, make him highly coveted. "I like to hit more than get hit," said Leti, who also plays defensive back.

He may get offers to play quarterback in an option attack similar to Moanalua's. "His technique, his weight transfer, now he gets nice, tight passes," Martinez said of Leti, who didn't play quarterback until his sophomore season. "He's improved so much. Then, he was an athlete. Now every step his feet take counts."

Tang didn't score extremely well at combines and camps, not with a 4.76 40 at USC. But he does power clean 340 pounds, and he's a classic game player, turning his play up a notch. All the days spent running and hearing Martinez's challenges have added up.

"We always compete with him. He can really talk," Tang said of Martinez's conditioning ploys. "It was the best thing for him to come here. He really knows defense."

The grade reports of each player's game performance are posted on the walls near the locker room entrance. Tang can barely stand to read them even though he grades quite high each week.

"The technique has gone up a lot for our program. They grade everything, which is good, but I don't like it sometimes," he admitted. "Sometimes I don't get my reads, or look at the wide receiver, and my grade lowers. Everything counts."

The attention to detail has worked. "He's a good coach," Tang said of Martinez. "He does everything for us. He stays in his office a long time just to figure out how to stop the next team. This is his life and we're his family."

Tang may also coach one day.

"If I do, I'd coach exactly the way he coaches," he said.

Perhaps the biggest difference in Moanalua football players may be the way they carry themselves.

"The whole program has changed," Leti said. "Especially the way we act in school."

Martinez is a P.E. teacher, and he keeps an open dialogue with his peers regarding good and bad behavior by his student-athletes on campus.

"I print out those e-mails and read them to the team," he said. "So far, it's been all good, a lot of praise."

Leti concedes one fact when it comes to Moanalua football and the unending attention to detail.

"He's the best coach I ever had. He turned the whole system around. If it wasn't for him, me and 'Q' and Moanalua football wouldn't be known," Leti said.

There's more.

"We used to have car 'couches' in here," Leti said of the locker room. "Now it's clean. We take off our shoes when we come in here. It's our second home."

Mehrtens, the former player who now assists, doesn't plan on leaving. Ever.

"You learn so much from him, not just about football," said the former lineman. "You learn about life."