“For sure I’ll vote for him,”
Miano said of Lee, who was one of his high school football coaches and a
colleague on the University of Hawaii staff until last year. Lee is
running for Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee.
“He will do a great job on
behalf of the Hawaiian people,” Miano continued. “I’ll contribute
financially. I’ll even hold signs for Cal.”
The admiration is reciprocated
by Lee, as well as by his brother, Ron, who was also a Warriors staff
member. And Ron was the head coach at Kaiser High School, where Miano
starred as the Cougars won the 1979 Prep Bowl. That was an early
highlight in the legendary coaching careers of the Lees. It was a
springboard for Miano, a former diver, to college football at UH and
then a long NFL career.
“We’re close,” Cal Lee said. “And we’ve remained close.”
Not quite as physically close as
they were at UH. Now they’re a school apart, separated by a couple of
miles of Kalanianaole Highway and Lunalilo Home Road.
The Lees, now coaching at Kalani
High (where Cal was a star linebacker in the ’60s), and Miano, head
coach at his alma mater, collide Thursday night when the Falcons — who
don’t have their own stadium — play their homecoming game at Kaiser
against the Cougars.
It’s the greatest thing to
happen to public high school football in East Honolulu since … well,
since Kaiser won the Prep Bowl 33 years ago.
These aren’t the best teams in
the state. Neither is in the state’s Top 10. Both are feisty members of
the OIA White Division, small enrollment schools that actually belong
there.
But they’re up and coming.
Kalani (4-3, 4-4 overall) has steadily improved since Ron Lee joined
Greg Taguchi’s staff in 2010 as offensive coordinator and got another
boost when Cal came on board to run the defense last spring. Meanwhile,
Kaiser (6-1, 6-2) has won six in a row in Miano’s first season of
coaching in the prep ranks.
The Falcons are playing Thursday
for a shot at the White playoffs, and the Cougars for top seed. But
there’s much more at stake. There’s that formerly nasty R word that
we’re not supposed to acknowledge exists in high school sports.
Recruiting. There, I wrote it.
The Interscholastic League of
Honolulu powerhouses and other public schools used to mine the talent in
this area without having to worry about Kaiser or Kalani. Now, with
their big-name coaches, they have the ability to stand up to them — and
each other. Miano said the outcome of Thursday’s televised game could
determine where some future stars end up going.
“As much as I like the Lee
brothers, it’s a recruiting war,” Miano said. “To me, it’s probably more
intense than when I was at the University of Hawaii, because we have
our rivals right down the street.”
Since before the turn of the millennium, football was all but dead at Kalani and critically ill at Kaiser.
“I’d drive by Kalani and they
used to have these small little pods of players,” Miano said. “I always
wondered if these (football programs) could survive on their own, maybe
they’d have to combine. Now this whole area is revitalized with the Lee
brothers and what’s happened at Kaiser. You have to give (the players) a
reason to stay. We have the reasons now.”
Now, with the big-name coaches
on board, Kalani and Kaiser both keep more of the athletes from their
districts. And whatever you want to call it, they’re already attracting
others from outside the borders.
“Actually, it’s more that
they’re staying home. Especially this year, we had a great turnout for
JV, about 50 kids,” Ron Lee said. “The other real noticeable thing is
I’ve been going to the same places for everything for years and years.
Now all of a sudden the people who work at Zippy’s, Longs, the bank,
they all tell me they’re Kalani grads and they follow the team.”
There’s something new about this
rivalry, but there’s something traditional about it. It’s great to see
these coaches who weren’t retained at UH are still in the game, at their
old schools (Ron Lee, a Saint Louis graduate, started his coaching
career at Kalani), and for the right reasons. Hawaii high school
football coaching was already very good, and it’s now this much better.
“When you go to your alma mater,
it’s special,” Cal Lee said. “I’ve come full circle in the sense I
started here and coming back to where I started my football career. I
have a lot of aloha for the school.”
Miano is too busy and too happy to worry about not getting the UH head coaching job he applied for last year.
“I have so much respect for (the
Lee brothers). I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair if it weren’t for
them, because I wouldn’t have played football,” he said. “I’m really
content and I find myself at peace.
Finally being a head coach. Having great kids who work tremendously hard and a great staff. My goal was to never leave Hawaii.”
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