Gov. Josh Green admits he didn't prepare much at all for the pregame workout he put himself through at Roosevelt High School's Ticky Vasconcellos Stadium. Yet, there he was on Tuesday, throwing dozens of passes to members of the Moanalua and Roosevelt girls flag football teams prior to the first-ever sanctioned OIA game.
"Oh, like zero," Green said when asked how much he warmed up for the pregame action. "I was a goalkeeper back in the day in soccer, but I didn't have the courage to be out on the football field back in the day. But it was fun. I just have to say, it's really fun to be with young people and it's fun to throw the ball around."
Green was one of a handful of community leaders present for the Hawai‘i DOE and OIA's kickoff event at Roosevelt, which featured a doubleheader to commemorate Hawai‘i becoming the 12th state to sanction girls flag football as an official sport.
Tuesday evening at Roosevelt had a celebratory feel for a moment that took years of planning. A ceremony last August at McKinley High School made the sport official in the Islands, while free events involving NFL teams were held across O‘ahu in the weeks prior to kickoff.
"It's just a great, wonderful feeling when you can see so many people, so many organizations and communities come together. Many people have helped to make this happen," DOE superintendent Keith Hayashi said. "I can't speak enough about our coaches, our athletic directors, our principals, schools, student-athletes, who are working their their tails off to make this a great season.
"As I watch some of the girls practicing out here, I mean, they're putting on moves that I think I probably would have sprained my ankle. The skill level, I'm just so impressed with. And again, encouraging everyone to come out and support these young women. They're going to put on a great show. So come out, let's make this a great season. Support your communities."
Following a brief pregame ceremony, Green performed the coin toss and the inaugural season was all set to begin.
"We're crazy over football (in Hawai‘i), and for too long, we've excluded half of the best people, which are young women," Green said. "I think it's just fantastic. I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot of collegiality between the men and women football players. There'll probably be a lot of training that's available to them going forward. A lot of it is skills. There might not be contact, that's not what this sport is necessarily about. But speed, precision, you saw the routes they were running. I think there's a lot to be said for the training of the mind, and the rigors of football are serious."
The Maui Interscholastic League began flag football over the weekend, as did the ILH. Once the OIA games on Tuesday at Roosevelt got started, Moanalua immediately established itself as one of the early state favorites. Na Manehune routed the Rough Riders 44-0 behind seven touchdown passes from quarterback Zaira Sugui.
Sugui, a junior, is also a two-time state wrestling champion. She estimated that she has been playing flag football at the club level for four or five years, but has taken on the quarterback position for the last three. When she was first told flag football was becoming an official high school sport in her home state, she was incredulous.
"I was like, 'No way,'" she said. "They really said that flag football is a new sport to high school. I was excited, because now Hawai‘i girls can come together, and if they really love football when they're young, then they can showcase it in college if they want to play flag football. And a lot of these girls came out, and this was their first sport. I'm glad that flag football gave them that opportunity to join a sport."
Sugui, who was seen throwing the ball as far as 45 to 50 yards in pregame warmups, impressed with a bevy of throws on Tuesday, showing accuracy and finesse.
"It was nice to see all my girls perform and show what they improved on, because some of them never knew anything about football," she said.
Moanalua is coached by Ladd Mokiao, who has over a decade coaching flag football on the islands.
"It's a privilege for the girls and us, me and my coaching staff, to experience all the things that the governor, everybody's doing for a female sport and flag football," Mokiao said. "It's a long time coming, and glad to see this."
Mokiao holds his players to a high standard, including Sugui. He winced when a reporter opined that his quarterback played well on Tuesday.
"She had an alright game, a lot of miscues and wasn't really warmed up," Mokiao said of Sugui. "She's a lot better than what you see, what you saw on the field tonight. As a coach, I'm very hard on her anyway, so I mean, she might have looked better to other people, not but not me."
In the nightcap, Kaimukī defeated McKinley 6-2 in a low-scoring affair.
The inaugural HHSAA girls flag football season will culminate with the state tournament, which runs from April 30-May 3 at Mililani and Pearl City High School.
Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
