Given its location, the University of Hawai‘i football team is annually the sport's most well-traveled squad. In 2025, the Rainbow Warriors could also be one of the most well-rested by the time the regular season is over.
Due to a unique quirk in the team's 2025 schedule, the Rainbow Warriors will have three bye weeks, all of which come after the regular season's halfway point. The first came after the team's road win at Air Force on Sept. 27. The 'Bows are currently in their second bye week of the season after clinching bowl eligibility in a win at Colorado State on Oct. 18.
Hawai‘i's last bye week of the regular season will come after its penultimate home game on Nov. 8 against San Diego State. Each bye week for the Rainbow Warriors will come after two games, allowing the team's coaching staff to plan ahead in hopes of having the players peak at season's end.
"The timing kind of helped us out. We had to go through our gauntlet of things early on, and I thought we came out as healthy as you could. It just gives us an opportunity to get healthy again," head strength and conditioning coach Bobby Thomas said after Friday's practice. "Give us everything you got for two games, and then we'll take care of you. It's been unique, because I haven't really seen a lot of those where it's been set up like this, but it's really in our favor and we just got to take advantage of this."
While the wear and tear of a game week is physically strenuous for the Rainbow Warriors, the bye weeks provide more time for the players to get in the weight room and maintain muscle.
Thomas, who is in his first year with the program, credits Chang and the university for investing in technology such as Kinexon vests that provide key metrics for players. Some data points, such as speed tracking, showed that running back Landon Sims is one of the team's fastest players at 22 miles per hour despite being one of the heaviest offensive skill players at 220 pounds.
"As far as that stuff goes, you're able to see, OK, (a given player) didn't really touch his numbers today. We know what everybody's true player load is of what they can handle. They have a max number that they've hit. Now we can kind of watch and monitor, OK, hey, we need to be able to touch 85% of that today, this is a go day. Or, OK, this is a light day, we need to stay below 50%.
"We have our days where they need to touch 90% of speed in order to help maintain the hamstring strength and stuff like that. We can see change of direction, how many cuts to the right, how many cuts to the left, monitor those things as well. So, I mean, there's so many metrics, it's unbelievable. I can't thank coach Timmy and this in the university enough. It's a financial burden, but it shows the investment. They already had a plan in place."
When asked about Thomas' contributions to the program, Chang said "Bobby Thomas has done an unbelievable job for us. He's giving us his life's work and there's really a true alignment from me to him and the rest of our coaches and our players. During this bye week, it's a balance between us playing football and getting our bodies ready to just continue to be better."
While the bye weeks will help the Rainbow Warriors physically, players on the team also believe the idle weekends will benefit them in additional ways.
"Especially in the phase that we have now, two games, bye week, two games, bye week, it helps us a lot," co-captain and standout left guard Zhen Sotelo said. "It helps us get our bodies back, and it helps us stay on top of school as well. We got to do a good job at being student-athletes. ... I feel like the bye weeks are great times for us to just reconnect as players as well, because in this time of the season, we get so caught up in just being athletes and stuff and lose the personal side of it. So, these bye weeks bring us closer together as brothers, and that's what we need."
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Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
