As the only female on Lanai High School’s eight-player football team, Ryllah-Rae Rodrigues showed that with hard work and perseverance, anything is possible.

Baldwin senior Isaiah Souza learned through his athletic experience about the importance of being dedicated and having a positive attitude, which led him to excel on and off the baseball and football fields.

Writing of their experiences, the two Maui Interscholastic League student-athletes earlier this month were selected by the Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association as the state’s winners of this year’s NIAAA Student-Athlete Scholarship Essay Contest. Entrants were required to write about how participating in athletics has positively impacted their lives.

Applicants also had to submit test scores and GPAs with their essays.

On Tuesday morning, Rodrigues told The Maui News that the main component of her essay was that “you can do anything you set your mind to.”

“I chose to write about eight-man football because it was really special to me because I not only got to represent myself, but all female athletes,” said Rodrigues, also a four-year player for the Pine Lasses’ girls basketball team. “It was such a fun experience and I’m glad I stuck with it, and my advice to anybody trying out a new sport is just to go for it. You never know unless you try.”

The most important message that Souza took away from his time with the Bears was having respect for the people around you, such as “your teammates, your coaches and the people you’re playing against.”

“I just wrote about the lessons and the things that I learned through sports, through baseball and football,” he said on Wednesday afternoon. “I shared about what my coaches have taught me, not just about baseball, but life lessons, and how it kinda changed me as a person in a positive way.”

The seniors now advance into the Section 7 regional contest with the winners from California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada. Section winners then advance to the national finals.

Rodrigues said that she remembers watching Lanai’s first day of football practice. It was a typical Monday afternoon when the coach asked if she was interested in joining the team.

“That day I went home and told my mom I was going to play football, and they were like ‘What? You’re so crazy for playing that sport, it’s so rough,’ ” she said with a laugh. “I told them that if I work hard just like them, I’m sure I can handle it.”

Sure enough, Rodrigues was playing wide receiver for the Pine Lads as a freshman, saying “it was such an amazing experience.”

If there had been a season this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the coaches were going to let her play as a defensive lineman.

“Because it was a new sport and I was surrounded by male athletes, I felt like I had to push myself more, in a sense,” she said. “Throughout my freshman year, I couldn’t catch any single ball that came at me and I was getting so frustrated. That offseason time, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, is this really what I want to do? Am I going to embarrass myself for the rest of the four years?’ ”

But Rodrigues persevered. After putting in extra time and practicing on her own to improve her skills, she was ready to hit the field with confidence every season after that.

“I just decided to push myself through it because I realized that I would be the first female in Lanai’s history to play football for all four years,” she said.

And when Rodrigues was not training for football and basketball or focusing on her high school studies, she was earning her associate’s degree through the University of Hawaii-Maui College Outreach Center on Lanai.

In the fall, she’ll begin studying for a bachelor’s in elementary education through UH-Manoa’s College of Education cohort program.

It was “difficult at first” to balance schoolwork, sports, social obligations and college courses as a high school student, Rodrigues said, but she knows she’ll only be better prepared in pursuing her dream of becoming a superintendent of schools.

She said sports taught her how to set goals and how to accomplish them through dedication and hard work.

“I know it sounds cheesy, but if you put your mind to it, anything is possible and it really is true,” she said. “I experienced it firsthand, you know, when I couldn’t catch the ball, but I really loved the sport and kept pushing myself and became a decent player so that I could keep up with the rest of the boys, and it was just fun after that.”

Like Rodrigues, Souza said that he also gained valuable lessons through athletics that he’ll “definitely” bring into the next stage of his life.

Souza will be attending California Lutheran University, where he’ll play baseball and study business management.

“I will take these lessons with me everywhere I go and for the rest of my life, as I’m still learning every day,” he said. “I’m looking forward to meeting new people and playing at a high level, and experiencing things on my own.”

After being a part of a few big wins — he was a member of two youth baseball world championship teams — and as a 2019 first-team MIL football All-Star as a running back, Souza knows the importance of teamwork and having a positive mindset.

“If you have a bad attitude, it’s going to create a negative mood and affect the people around you, and the whole mood at practice or at the games,” he said.

On top of being a two-sport high school athlete and maintaining a 4.0 GPA, he has also been taking classes at UH-MC, noting that understanding “how to manage your time” plays a major role in “getting things done” on and off the field.

But overall, the many years spent playing sports has shaped him into who he is today.

“You learn what will help you to be a great person,” he said. “Sports taught me about hard work. You’re not going to get anywhere without it. You really have to sacrifice some things and work really hard.”

* Dakota Grossman is at dgrossman@mauinews.com.