Sept. 15, 2008
Hawaiian Pride By Bob Socci
A little less than 5,000 miles away, about the time the Islanders are trading the morning's last sip of Kona for the day's first look at the surf, one of their own will stroll out to a sideline along the Eastern seaboard for a football game against Rutgers University.
Joining him will be another man of their people, as we've all come to know not just by his dark hair and tan complexion but by the syllables strung together on the back of a jersey whose front spells out, "NAVY."
Were it a "Wheel of Fortune" mystery, one would lose more than a fair share of winnings simply trying to buy up all the vowels. Twelve of them in all, among the 21 letters needed to name the quarterback from Kapolei.
And that's the abridged version. If you hear it on radio or television, it becomes even more fragmented.
Sometimes you'll hear the half of it, as in "Kaipo-Noa." At others, you'll only catch a quarter, as in "Enhada."
Rarely, though, will you take in the wider breadth of it, hyphens and all. Time simply doesn't allow it in the flow of a game.
And never - at least here on the mainland -- will it be heard in whole, middle names of "Hiwahiwa Akahi" included. Of course, in the big picture - if not on the island of Hawai'i - it really matters little.
What's important is its origins. That we don't - just as he doesn't - forget where Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada comes from.
"The harder the name is to say," he reasons, "the more people will remember it."
And the more they will associate it and him, like his first-year head coach Ken Niumatalolo, with a native land increasingly becoming part of our national consciousness.
Within the sports world, the New Year began with the University of Hawaii infiltrating the Bowl Championship Series with a berth in the Sugar Bowl.
More recently, America's 50th state celebrated a second Little League Baseball World Series title in four years and welcomed home six medalists from the Beijing Olympics - the most per capita of any state in the Union.
In the political arena, a former state basketball champion continues his bid to bring his left-handed jump shot all the way from Punahou High to Pennsylvania Avenue.
All the while, his fellow Oahuans seek their own White House reservations - as Commander-In-Chief's champions.
What they represent to the 1.2-plus million back home - particularly the population classified as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders - is a hopeful reminder of what lies beyond the Pacific horizon.
Hawaii, for many who call it home, is at once a paradise as well as its polar opposite, something other than what most of us experience or envision. It is as diverse as it is picturesque. And though tourists are attracted to its natural beauty, locals are left with an extraordinarily high cost of living.
Perhaps we see only lush countryside, majestic volcanoes, blue water and bright sunshine through the steely eyes of Jack Lord - you remember, "Book `em Danno!" - or the cool aviator shades of Tom Selleck driving his red Ferrari.
Reality isn't Hawaii Five-O or Magnum P.I. Nor is it strictly Don Ho merrily singing "Tiny Bubbles." For some, the facts of life surrounded by the Pacific include what's referred to as Island Fever.
But in Kaheaku-Enhada and Niumatalolo - two of the most visible representatives of one of the country's most prestigious institutions - Islanders can look to those who look as they do, with names just as long.
On the screens of their TV's tuned into the Midshipmen are two of their own who never succumbed to any sense of isolation or hopelessness.
"I think it means a lot," says Kaheaku-Enhada. "It shows that people from Hawaii are doing bigger and better things. You can get off the Island. Hopefully, it opens doors and gives people something to shoot for."
He says this as a recently-turned 22-year old who's been a guest of the president (thanks to Navy's sweep of Air Force and Army the last three seasons) and toast of the nation (having led the Mids to their first win over Notre Dame since 1963).
A senior at the Naval Academy, Kaheaku-Enhada is also on track to continue satisfying his wanderlust - eventually, he hopes, from the cockpit of a jet as a Marine Corps pilot.
Waiting, it appears, is a life without limits. Ironically, one he'd find unattainable if not for that relatively small world of his youth.
"Hawaii is a great place to be from, it's a great place to live," says Kaheaku-Enhada. "The people are laid back and polite."
And, he's repeatedly said, committed to family. As his own childhood demonstrates.
"I was raised with a ton of cousins and brothers," says Kaheaku-Enhada, one of 10 boys and two girls raised by his father Kevin Enhada. "I always had people around me. We were always outside doing things.
"We spent a lot of our time at the beach. Plus, my mom (Dellas) is very athletic. She played volleyball, basketball and rowed a canoe. I'd watch from the sidelines and by the time I was old enough, I started playing sports."
If not shooting or throwing a ball, he probably was casting a line.
"My grandfather (Charles Kaheaku) taught me everything from tying knots to how to catch a fish," says Kaheaku-Enhada.
More than waiting for fish to bite, they spent their time chewing the fat. Often, with Kaipo-Noa's maternal grandfather sharing stories from his service in the Navy.
Those anecdotes, as well as the example of an uncle, Adrian Kaheaku, would someday help the Midshipmen land a quality catch - a quarterback who would be warrior.
It would also take the influence and assistance of a few Rainbow Warriors.
As a young high school athlete in Kapolei, an urban center roughly 25 miles from Honolulu, developed on land once used to grow pineapple and sugarcane, Kaheaku-Enhada considered himself more a basketball player than potential football standout.
"I always wanted to play football, but my parents said it was too dangerous," he once told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. "When I got into high school, they gave the OK."
The timing proved impeccable. By Kaheaku-Enhada's sophomore year, Kapolei coach Darren Hernandez had installed the triple-option offense.
A natural fit under center seemed to be the kid who'd done a bit of everything for the Hurricanes - play wide receiver and defensive back, deliver and return kicks and punts.
He certainly had the speed, timed at 4.4 seconds in the 40-yard dash. He had the intuition.
And in assistant coach, Michael Carter, Kaheaku-Enhada had a teacher who could help him begin to truly understand the nuances of the option offense.
Carter had been very successful navigating the same attack at the University of Hawaii under then head coach Bob Wagner and offensive coordinator, Paul Johnson. In 1992 he led the Warriors to their first Western Athletic Conference title and a victory over Illinois in the Holiday Bowl.
One of Carter's teammates was fellow quarterback Ivin Jasper. Among their assistant coaches was Ken Niumatalolo, himself an ex-UH quarterback.
In time, they - with Johnson - would form a circle that would serve as Kaheaku-Enhada's shrinking football universe. However he was broadening his horizons outside the game.
Under the tutelage of Carter and Hernandez, Kaipo-Noa was proficient enough at the triple-option for Kapolei - as part of a quarterback platoon with a better passer named Jon Medeiros - to attract attention from service academy rivals, Navy and Air Force.
Already, he was - as Hernandez told the Star-Bulletin - "probably going to join the military anyway." Plus, by his own admission, Kaheaku-Enhada was shaping up.
"I wasn't the best of kids," Kaipo-Noa says, over a subtle track of laughter, his smile visible through the phone. "You can ask my mom about that."
Whatever mischief he once caused, a boy being a boy, Kaheaku-Enhada was now becoming a man.
"I had a lot of support in high school to push me," he said. "(My coaches) challenged me. They said a little that produced a lot.
"They told me, `You can be great.' I didn't believe them at first. Then I got a (college) recruiting letter and realized, `I do have a chance.'"
Among the suitors who'd eventually pay a visit on the recruiting trail was Niumatalolo, who by then had long since followed Johnson to the mainland, including two stints at the Naval Academy.
The first when Johnson was the Mids' offensive coordinator in the mid-nineties and, later, when he returned with his option offense in tow as Navy's head coach in 2002.
While Kaheaku-Enhada would cackle over those coaches who showed up at his doorstep in their floral prints - trying to look the look of the locals - he could see that Niumatalolo was authentically Hawaiian.
Whether he dressed the part or not.
"He was very sophisticated," Kaheauku-Enhada laughingly replied when asked for his first impression of the then Navy assistant. "He looks Hawaiian, but he's wearing a suit! What's going on here?"
Kaheaku-Enhada was, well, a bit more casual.
"Besides Kaipo's mom, nobody had a shirt on," Niumatalolo recently told Bill Wagner of the Annapolis Capital. "A couple of brothers had just gotten back from the beach and his father had just come home from work. We all just sat around real casual-like and ate pizza.
"Kaipo comes from a simple, hard-working family."
Outward appearance aside, it was clear they were one and the same. The coach in the neatly-pressed suit and the shirtless kid connected.
"I was happy to see a local person in my house, as opposed to people who looked like tourists," said Kaheaku-Enhada, who would spend his first three years in Annapolis answering to Niumatalolo as Johnson's assistant.
Then last December, after Johnson was lured to Georgia Tech, he found himself fielding questions at a press conference introducing Niumatalolo as the first Division I head coach of Samoan ancestry. At the time, Kaheaku-Enhada invoked the term, "Hawaiian Pride."
He recently explained himself.
"Coach Niumat has a pride in where he comes from," Kaheaku-Enhada says. "You can see it in the way he carries himself everyday. He holds his head high.
"It's also in the ways he leads us and his love for the team. He treats everyone like family. You can see (that commitment to family) in any household in Hawaii."
Family - here in Annapolis, at home on Oahu - is what Kaheaku-Enhada values most.
"I truly care about the guys on this team," he says. "I'll do anything for those guys. They just have to ask."
Mostly, they want what any Navy fan wants - a healthy conclusion to his career, after missing the season's first two games due to a left hamstring injury suffered in an Aug. 9 scrimmage.
When healthy, few - if any - are better making the split-second decisions incumbent on an option quarterback.
"He's by far the best option quarterback I've had as far as reading it, understanding it and knowing when to pitch it and keep it," Jasper, the former Hawaii player and current Navy offensive coordinator, told the Honolulu Advertiser.
Often that brilliance is obscured by the success of others.
For example, when the Mids led the nation in rushing last year, their top two fullbacks totaled 1,545 yards and 15 touchdowns, while their three primary slot backs carried for 1,626 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Kaheaku-Enhada must instantly determine how the defense reacts. Should he hand off to the fullback? Keep the football? Or pitch it to a teammate? Three options, generally, on every snap.
He's afforded a half-second, at most, to reach his first conclusion. By his second or third decision, there's barely enough time to utter a couple of syllables, forget trying to pronounce his entire name.
His skill set is like that of a point guard, mainly setting up his teammates and balancing individual rushing totals - as if they formed the scoring column of a basketball box score.
But lest you think of Kaheaku-Enhada as some sort of Steve Nash in shoulder pads, there's also a bit of Greg Maddux in his game. If one pitch sets up the next in baseball, each play can do the same in football.
"I like to set the defense up, run one play to set up the defense for the next play," says Kaipo-Noa, fittingly illustrating his point through the example of a defender assigned to take away a pitch to the slot back. "You pitch (the football), pitch it, pitch it and then you fake the pitch and hit the alley for 80 yards.
"You take what the defense gives you."
Unfailingly, the defense - designed to stop the run - will eventually present the opportunity for a big pass play.
Something he hopes to seize on more consistently this season. Even though Kaheaku-Enhada's arm remains his greatest source of self-deprecation.
"I have the ugliest ball in college football, but it gets there," said Kaipo-Noa, still amazed the Midshipmen were among the national leaders in passing efficiency a year ago. "I don't know how that happened!"
Joking aside, as with the running game, he's got a keen sense of his strengths as a passer.
"I know what I can do with the ball," Kaheaku-Enhada says. "I have to protect the ball."
And, furthermore, his two most important plays were made with the football in flight.
They were throws to Reggie Campbell on successive snaps last November at Notre Dame. The former was a 25-yard, go-ahead touchdown in the third overtime. The latter was the ensuing two-point pass that proved the difference in a 48-46 victory.
Anything but ugliest balls in college football, they'll be remembered as two of the prettiest throws in Navy history.
Made by a young man who revealed in those moments his most defining characteristic - a coolness evident earlier in the game when he playfully gestured for the Notre Dame crowd to get louder and slapped hands with Irish defenders.
"I really don't know what I was thinking," he said earlier this month. "I was just trying to have fun. It's the way I look at football, especially playing against Notre Dame. The majority of those guys are going to the (NFL).
"I was just living in the moment. I wasn't being disrespectful in any way. "
Who he is, where he's from, what he wants to be wouldn't allow him to disrespect his opponent. Or himself.
What seems his own Hawaiian Pride just wouldn't let him.
"I've always wanted to push myself," Kaheaku-Enhada says of his desire to fly in the Marine Corps. "I want to do something different. I want to experience things. How many people can say they've flown a plane? With the Marines, that's a very small fraternity. I want to be part of that."
And since he's so far off the Island, why not go farther?
"From time to time, I'll be lying in bed and (a thought) will pop into my head, `Hey, you've come a long way,'" Kaipo-Noa said. "A lot has changed, as far as the way I think about things and the kind of person I am."
