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Football building up on Friendly Isle

New middle school program completes season; Akanas’ camp set to return

By Robert Collias 6 min read

Mike Kahale sees talent every day at Molokai Middle School.

Kahale, the Molokai High School football head coach, is a teacher at the middle school and he has set in motion a plan to bolster his high school team going forward: a brand-new tackle football program for seventh and eighth graders at MMS.

Three eight-player teams emerged in April and four weeks of practice culminated in games in May before a COVID-19 outbreak at MMS put a crimp in the schedule. But Kahale was still happy with the inaugural season that drew more than 40 participants.

Molokai High School has won the last five Maui Interscholastic League eight-player football titles -- the last season took place in 2019 due to the pandemic.

"We don't have any tackle football programs here, no youth programs and obviously we have no (junior varsity) as an eight-man program," Kahale said via phone on Monday. "So, everybody who comes to us at the high school level is like their first exposure. Maybe they've had some flag football experience in the past, but in terms of any tackle experience, nothing.

"So we're always starting from square one and since I'm a teacher and I coordinate the athletics program at the middle school -- I see these kids every day and I know there's a high interest and kids want to play."

With the opportunity presented by COVID-19 government grant money, Kahale saw the chance to start his long-wanted dream of a feeder program into his high school team.

"With this extra CARES money, COVID and seeking out other donations, I got some financial support and we bought (50) brand-new helmets and shoulder pads," Kahale said. "I had old uniforms from the high school team and a bunch of older equipment that was just sitting in boxes. A lot of that other stuff I had already.

"So we got the kids, we had about 45 kids signed up total and then we went down to the high-30s, once we started putting on pads and stuff, but just a great opportunity for our kids. And I got my coaching staff to come, we created three eight-man teams -- three of my assistant coaches took the head coach (spot) for each one. I was the official and the coordinator."

Kahale added that the opportunity taken has paid off -- the Farmers have a longterm goal of playing in the 11-player MIL ranks, hoping to join the league when Kihei high school comes on board, perhaps as soon as the 2024 season.

"We were teaching them our system, our way that we do things and it becomes a feeder program for us," Kahale said. "If (11-player football) is the end goal -- and it is at some point -- we have got to figure out a way to attract more kids, to have them exposed a little bit earlier, and to teach them some fundamental skills."

The program started well with four weeks of practice and then ran into some challenges when COVID-19 hit the Friendly Isle hard in May.

"We were going to have each team play the other two teams two times each, so it would have been just a four-game season," Kahale said. "We played our first games and then right after that we had some issues with COVID, in the school with our kids, within the community -- basically we got shut down for a little over three weeks."

Kahale was on the Mainland for the college graduation of one of his sons and when he got back, the enthusiasm to finish the season was still strong.

"We finished out the season with one more game -- it was eighth-grade promotion that day (May 26) and we played our final game, our Super Bowl with whatever kids we had left," Kahale said. "I think we had like 25 kids or so. We just made two even teams and had our Super Bowl at the end and it was great, really nice."

Kahale said the response to the program was huge for the tiny island.

"We kind of filled up our parking lot, and you know that's our stands on Molokai -- we were surprised at how many in the community came out," Kahale said. "They just wanted to see their kids participating. It's been a pause for so long, especially for our younger kids. High school athletics started, but we didn't have any youth sports."

Kahale wants to keep the middle school program growing and plans to make it an annual season each spring.

"We put the investment into brand-new helmets and shoulder pads, so we hope to continue this every year and make this be our feeder program for our high school," he said. "The kids are so pumped, so excited to play. They would be more excited if we got to travel and play somebody else instead of banging on each other sometimes."

Kahale added, "I'm hoping at some point that maybe we can align our middle school schedule with something that happens with other leagues, maybe on Maui or Oahu,"

Kahale said if half of the 30 or so eighth graders who started the season come out as freshmen in the fall, the program will have been an immediate success. The MIL eight-player league is set to welcome back Seabury Hall to the mix in the fall, according to what Kahale has been told by MIL officials, making it a four-team league with Molokai, Hana and Lanai.

Molokai football will get a boost when Akana Athletics -- run by the basketball-playing Akana brothers from Molokai, Ry, Jarinn and Brandyn -- puts on the second Molokai Skills Camp, free for football players ages 8 to 17, June 27-28 at the Molokai High School field.

The first such camp was in 2019 before the last two years were wiped out by COVID-19.

Molokai native Kimo von Oelhoffen will be joined at the camp by Dominic Raiola and Chris Naeole, all former NFL players from Hawaii.

The camp will also include Kahuku High School coaches, state offensive player of the year Kainoa Carvalho and state defensive player of the year Liona Lefau. Brandyn Akana's son, Tausili Akana, a rising senior linebacker at Skyridge High School in Lehi, Utah, who has 47 college scholarship offers, will also be at the camp.

"We have been blessed, with all of our success, so this is something that we decided as a family that we're going to do -- we're doing basketball, we're doing football and we're also doing a volleyball camp," Brandyn Akana, the basketball coach at Kahuku, said Monday via phone from the Mainland, where he is traveling to colleges with his son. "We want to be able to do this for the kids of Molokai once a year. That's our plan and we remember being kids on Molokai and how it was difficult to really get really good camps and instruction.

"So, we feel that it's our job to come back and kind of put it on for the kids that are on Molokai right now."

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.

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