Football
16in16: Farrington Governors


In two years time, the Farrington football team will be enjoying all of the comforts of a brand new on-campus facility. In the meantime, however, the Governors have been taken out of their comfort zone, making do without a field to practice on.

Don't feel too bad for the Pride of Kalihi, because they're certainly not looking for any sympathy.

With its field — and much of its campus — under renovation, the Govs are improvising. They often split practices between Kalakaua District Park — little over half a mile from the school — and wherever they can find some space around campus.

On most days, the team can be seen jogging to and from the school, down Kalihi street with their full gear in tow.

"We'll watch film, get in the weight room up there, do some speed and agility stuff and then run it down there, get in our conditioning and our practice down there and run it back," junior running back Challen Faamatau said.

Faamatau participated in the University of Oregon camp over the summer, where he was named the top running back in his class.

"When we went up to Oregon for the camp, we got up at 6:30 in the morning on a daily basis, got breakfast and we had to walk all the way down to (Autzen) Stadium and practiced there," said Faamatau, who was joined by fullback Freedom Alualu on the trip. "So we got used to it and when we came back down from the trip, it was nothing new to us because it really prepared us."

Faamatau was able to take in the top-notch facilities on the Eugene campus, which only grew his appreciation for Farrington, the school where just about all of his family members graduated from.

"It's Kalihi, you know? We don't have that much good things, but I've been raised to always be thankful for what you've got," Faamatau said. "No matter what, be thankful and I'm thankful for having a wonderful coaching staff to coach me and help me get better and better, faster and quicker. We've just got to use whatever we've got. It's not going to stop us. We'll go wherever we need to go to get better and better every day."

One of Faamatau's teammates, senior wide receiver/cornerback Jathen Chaffin, can see the silver lining in the situation.

"It's hard, but there's always something good you get out of it," Chaffin said. "We get extra conditioning while going down to Kalakaua and if we had a field we wouldn't have that, so it's all for the better."

It's not always smooth sailing, however.

"There's a lot of kids watching us practice down there, a lot of middle schoolers and that's kind of neat," Chaffin said. "It can also be a distraction at times because you see weird random guys walking through the field, but it's just something that we need to overcome."

Randall Okimoto, who is entering his 14th season as head coach of his alma mater, refuses to allow the temporary displacement as an excuse.

"It's not that difficult for me. I like this, to tell you the truth," Okimoto said. "I don't know how the kids feel, (but) I like to put them in tough situations. It's about working through adversity. It's the lessons that you have to learn before you graduate from high school and become a man, so I love the fact that we have this."

Still, Okimoto, who sometimes runs with his players to and from campus, can't help but get excited about the future.

2015 Farrington Governors schedule

Aug. 15 — vs. Waipahu (at Aloha Stadium)
Aug. 22 — at Iolani*
Aug. 28 — vs. Moanalua
Sept. 4 — at Aiea
Sept. 12 — vs. Kailua
Sept. 17 — vs. Mililani (at Aloha Stadium)
Sept. 25 — at Kapolei
Oct. 3 — vs. Campbell (at Aloha Stadium)
All home games played at Roosevelt
*denotes non-league game

"We'll finally have a home stadium to call someplace home and that our community can come to and our student body can come to," Okimoto said. "They don't have to jump on the bus, they can just walk right to the field, so that's something that we look forward to."

Renovations aside, Okimoto has his work cut out for him this year with a relatively young team in arguably one of the state's toughest divisions in the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division I Blue.

Faamatau, along with Alualu, will have to shoulder most of the work load offensively with the graduation of prolific tailback Ranan Mamiya, who rushed for a team-high 1,246 yards and 16 touchdowns last year.

Whatsmore, the Govs must replace three-year starting quarterback Montana Liana under center and a number of defensive standouts, including five-star defensive tackle Breiden Fehoko (Texas Tech) and linebacker Jeremiah Pritchard (transferred).

"Jeremiah leaving leaves a void, but I think the team has responded in a great way," Okimoto said. "We've never had fifty kids come out during the summer, so they've stepped up and that's promising."

Okimoto is hoping his team will pick up where it left off last year, when it put together a 9-3 record and reached the semifinals of the Division I state tournament.

"Hopefully it's a new and improved team," Okimoto said. "We want to improve and not make the same mistakes that we made in the past seasons. We held the state champions to 17 points — I think that was their lowest output in the last two years for Mililani — so we need to build on that and we need to continue to strive to do better."

- Kalani Takase





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