Kaena Leopoldo and the McKinley Tigers will take on Bryson Johnson and the Kalaheo Mustangs with each squad searching for its first win. ScoringLive photo illustration

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Despite the results so far this season, McKinley football coach Pat Silva holds firm in the belief that his team is slowly, but steadily improving.

After being outscored by a combined 141 points through their first four games, the Tigers (0-4) will cross paths this weekend with another team in search of its first win of 2019 in Kalaheo (0-4).

The teams bring identical 0-3 league records into their game at Kailua's Alex Kane Stadium Saturday. They are the only winless teams remaining in the Oahu Interscholastic Association's Division II standings.

Both squads are coming off of bye weeks. The break in the schedule came at a good time for McKinley, Silva said.

"I think it just helps with giving our kids and the coaches a chance to work on things that we continue to need to work on, getting the timing on certain plays, gaining a better understanding, so for us I think it helps especially at this early stage of the season," Silva said.

The Tigers were blanked by Kekaulike (30-0) to open the season before losses to Roosevelt (42-6), Pearl City (33-0) and Kaiser (42-0) in league play.

"We've started off 0-4 at this point and having that bye week and refocusing, looking at the last six games and taking it one game at a time, hopefully if we can notch a win in each of those games it puts us back in the picture. I think the kids understand what we did and didn't do and the reason why we weren't successful in the past games," Silva said. "The kids are working hard, that's the main thing, the coaches continue to work hard and really pushy he kids; that's all we can really do is continue to work hard and hope for the best."

Silva said several factors have led to the less-than-stellar start to the season, including a merry-go-round of academically-ineligible players, particularly on the offensive line.

"That's been a challenge for us is who's eligible and who's not. As much as we change out the line and look at other kids, we find that we have one or two kids that we're hoping to help our offense on the line of scrimmage right now being ineligible because they're lacking the focus and discipline in the classroom and it is what it is," Silva said. "If you're not going to focus and commit yourself to academics, then you shouldn't be playing. That's how I look at it."

The Tigers saw most of its linemen graduate last spring and compounding the problem is the fact that several underclassmen decided not to return to the team this fall.

"It's a brand new front and that in itself presents challenges, but we just gotta keep plugging away and so it's good that we had that break last week," Silva said.

McKinley also opted to not field a junior varsity team this year, partly out of necessity.

"When we had to make that decision it was based on the numbers and the health and safety of our players, so when we did bring up our sophomores we were faced with some academic casualties coming in and that factored against King Kekaulike a lot," Silva said. "It was almost like a JV-versus-varsity (situation). About 70 percent of our team that night was JV kids."

However, Silva is hoping that game experience will pay off for his youngsters in the second half of this season and certainly beyond.

"When our other kids came back off of academic probation and became eligible, that put us in the high-40s, so that was the nice thing about it. Health and safety are no longer an issue, but for us we have a young team and a lot of our JV kids that would have been playing JV are up with the varsity and getting lots of playing time. With that comes struggles when we're young, so it's a matter of being patient with the younger kids and giving them the opportunity to grow," Silva said.

One of those 37 underclassmen on the roster is junior Kaena Leopoldo. The 5-foot-9, 160-pound Leopoldo saw most of his playing time at linebacker in the past, but has played well enough on offense to ascend to starting quarterback as well.

"He's the only underclassmen of the quarterback group that we've been working with, but he's got some experience working quarterback on the JV level and so we feel pretty good about his decision making," Silva said.

Leopoldo came off the bench against Pearl City and showed enough promise to warrant another opportunity under center. However, he was benched for two quarters against Kaiser the following week for missing a practice.

"Our policy is if you miss a practice, you sit out a half and at that point we had Alexandria (Buchanan) returning from a hamstring injury and she managed the game, she did fine," Silva said. "She started off slow and I thought she did a good job managing the game in the second half and playing to her potential, but that puts both Kaena and Alexandria in the quarterback position that we can probably look at either during a game."

Silva said that each game so far has provided a chance to learn and gain valuable repetitions against some of the division's top teams.

"I think it's allowed us to grow against the better competitors in our conference — not to say that other teams coming up are not competitive — but I think any time you're playing the top teams in the conference right off the bat, it kind of tells you where we're at as far as what you need to work on and what your strength and weaknesses are," Silva said. "I think each game has presented for our kids a chance for them to grow up."

To be sure, the Tigers are a work in progress, but things are trending in the right direction, Silva said.

"I think we're getting better at execution. We're still a little inconsistent, but we're trying to find the notch where everybody feels comfortable with what we're doing and so as we continue tow rom on things, it gets easier for the kids to understand and then with that your execution improves so we're happy with that and I think the more repetition the kids get, the better understanding they'll have," Silva said.

Silva sees the Mustangs — who have just 11 seniors on a roster of 39 total players — in a similar light to his own team.

"Although they have limited numbers, Kalaheo is always competitive and just like our program, we suffer through numbers ad so we're always hoping our kids are healthy and nothing happens over the course of the game that puts us in a bad situation," Silva said. "But I think where the difference lies is we have some depth to work with, but we still have some youth and like anything in life, when you've got some young and inexperienced kids it just takes time and you've just gotta be patient."

Kalaheo beat McKinley, 21-0, the last time the teams met, on Aug. 18 of last year at Roosevelt's Ticky Vasconcellos Stadium.

Kickoff Saturday is scheduled for 6 p.m.