Konawaena quarterback Austin Ewing finished the night with 330 yards through the air on 30-of-54 passing and two TDs in a thrilling non-league win over Saint Francis. CJ Caraang | SL

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Fri, Aug 19, 2016 @ Leilehua [ 6:00 pm ]

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Konawaena

23

Saint Francis

22

Final	1	2	3	4	T
Konawaena (8-2-0)	10	6	0	7	23
Saint Francis (5-3-0)	8	8	6	0	22

• Pass
• Rush
• Rec

Kaimanuwai Akana 161 yd

Austin Ewing 330 yd 2 TD

Tyson Shimabukuro 62 yd

Micah Laban 28 yd 1 TD

Scott McCleod 92 yd

Austin Aukai 79 yd

Konawaena coach Brad Uemoto knew that taking his team to Oahu to open the 2016 prep football season would likely pay dividends down the road.

He was right.

Uemoto's Wildcats parlayed a gutsy one-point, come-from-behind win over then-Interscholastic League of Honolulu-member Saint Francis into an 8-2 season and their second of three straight Big Island Interscholastic Federation Division II championships.

Konawaena reached the semifinals of the First Hawaiian Bank/HHSAA State Championships in both 2015 and 2016 — losing to the eventual-champion both times — but Uemoto says those heartbreakers provided the motivation and laid the foundation for a run at the school's first-ever state title the following season.

"That was a really good team and we had a lot of juniors that year," Uemoto reminisced.

Perhaps the most highly-touted of Konawaena's juniors that season was quarterback Austin Ewing, who was tabbed as ScoringLive's D2 Preseason Offensive Player of the Year after he threw for 2,290 yards with 31 touchdowns against six interceptions in 2015.

Ewing's preseason accolades, coupled with the Wildcats opening atop the ScoringLive/Hawaiian Electric D2 Power Rankings made for a lot of attention on their 2016 opener against the Saints, who came in at No. 7 on the very same list.

The game was played on Friday, August 19 at Leilehua's Hugh Yoshida Stadium, after it was moved from its original venue of Clarence T.C. Ching Field (formerly Cooke Field) on the University of Hawaii-Manoa campus.

Konawaena, which was coming off of a 48-46 loss to Radford in the state semifinals to end the 2015 season, was seeking its first win on Oahu since a 2001 victory over Waialua.

"I remember we were preseason No. 1 in the ScoringLive poll, I remember Austin Ewing was the preseason player of the year and we had just come off a really good season and a good run against Radford the year before in the state semifinals, so there was just a lot of hype going into the season," Uemoto said.

The Saints offered a somewhat-familiar opponent. The teams faced off at Julian R. Yates Field in Kealakekua to kick-off the 2015 season; Konawaena came away with an 18-6 win over Saint Francis in that one, which was Uemoto's very first game as coach of the Wildcats.

"When we scheduled that home-and-home series with them, we knew that Saint Francis was a good team," he explained.

With all of the lead-up for the 2016 rematch, there grew to be much anticipation for a game that had no bearing on league standings for either team. Inevitably, Uemoto knew that the matchup provided something that most of Konawaena's BIIF games could not.

"That preseason game against Saint Francis almost had a state tournament atmosphere," Uemoto said. "I think that was the foundation for them to make the title run the following year. The seniors of 2017 were just so seasoned and they were in such big games, so those games, like the ones against Saint Francis, were so big for our seniors the following year in making that state title run."

The game itself started off about as poorly as Uemoto could have hoped: a Saint Francis defensive touchdown just 32 seconds in.

"I remember the first series we had a high snap, we fumble it and they returned it to the house," Uemoto said.

The early fumble return was one of two defensive scores by the Saints that night; the other came on a 25-yard Wembley Mailei pick-6. It was one of his team's four interceptions off of Ewing.

"I distinctly remember Austin throwing four picks in that first half. I think that game was one of the defining moments that Austin Ewing had as our quarterback throughout his entire career," Uemoto disclosed.

"He had just thrown his fourth pick and I just remember him being at the end of the sideline and he was kind of alone. I went up to him and we had a good heart-to-heart talk about the way the game was going, but also the overall expectations for him as our quarterback going forward and we talked about the pressure he had coming into the season and being ranked number one," Uemoto said.

Ewing pulled his team even with an 18-yard TD pass to Kamakana Ching midway through the second quarter and the teams were tied at 16 at halftime.

"At halftime, I remember talking about adversity and battling through and sticking in there," said Uemoto.

He noted that both teams were still "working out kinks," but that the game was starting to take a physical toll on his bunch in the second half.

"We were a little short-handed going in with some guys on academic probation, so we went up with some JV pull-ups, (who) ended up getting some playing time, but we were just sticking guys in, shuffling positions with different kids and trying to plug holes," Uemoto said. "(Saint Francis) had a good defensive front that we had a tough time running the ball against and I know they ran some of that elephant package against us and that was a physical challenge for us to stop."

Uemoto, who calls the plays on offense, knew that Ewing would have to purge any memory of an abysmal first half to give his team a shot at a win in the second.

"At the end of the day, (Ewing) threw four interceptions and one got taken back to the house and I told him, ‘you know, we're still in this game and that's all that matters,' " Uemoto reflected.

The Wildcats erased a third Saint Francis lead with Micah Laban's 9-yard TD run early in the fourth quarter and reclaimed the lead for good with Harry Hill's ensuing PAT.

Konawaena's defense recorded three takeaways of its own, all of them off of interceptions, including two by Dustin Cho, who finished game-high nine tackles and a pass break-up.

Ewing finished the night with 330 yards through the air on 30-of-54 passing and two TDs.

"My expectations of him were to lead us back and give us a chance to win and essentially he did; He played well in the second half and we ended up with a close win," Uemoto said.

It was the only time that Ewing was intercepted four times in a game over the course of his 33-game prep career.

The teams renewed their non-league series in August of 2017 — a game won by Saint Francis, 39-20, at Konawaena — but their scheduled 2018 game was canceled when the opening weekend of the season was wiped away by the dual threat of Hurricanes Iselle and Julio.

"When we first played them (in 2015), you could just tell that they were very talented," Uemoto said of the Saints. "They were just such a young program that they were figuring out still how to win a football game, but you could just tell as a program and what Kip (Akana, former Saint Francis coach) was doing over there, that they would turn into a really good football team eventually and every year we played them they just kept getting better and better.

"I actually liked that series. We kept that home-and-home alive because we knew that we would get a good, quality look in the preseason. They were just so physical, they had good athletes and it always presented good challenges for us, so I really liked them playing in the preseason," Uemoto said.

The Wildcats stayed overnight at the Saints' gymnasium on their Manoa campus. Uemoto recalled a light moment amongst his players and coaches when the teams shared a pre-game meal.

"Our kids walked into the pre-game meal and they literally thought that half of their players were their parents," Uemoto laughed. "That (Saint Francis) team that year, they had some physical specimens."

Just eight days after their one-point win over Saint Francis, the 2016 Wildcats nearly pulled off an upset of BIIF-D1 champion Hilo.

Konawaena erased a 20-point first-half deficit with a string of 21 unanswered points to pull ahead midway through the third quarter. It clung to a one-point lead until the game's final minute, when the Vikings completed the comeback with a 29-yard field goal with just 51 seconds to play.

"I think the lesson was that we were so concerned about upholding a standard, or a ranking, or what people believed in the kind of team that we were, but that Hilo loss ended up being a really good game for us because we moved forward and dropped all the pressure of being a No. 1 ranked team," Uemoto said. "I think after that we played real good football, re-earning what people thought we were."

The Wildcats went on to win their next seven games to improve to 8-1 on the year before a season-ending 28-14 loss in the state semifinals at the hands of Lahainaluna.

The Lunas went on to claim their first of four consecutive D2 state championships the following week.

"I think that was one of our more talented teams, in terms of on paper," Uemoto said. "It was a resilient team. I think we had a 7-0 lead and we had just picked off Lahaina and were heading down to punch one in and we fumbled the ball. They came back and scored and we were tied at the half. It was another good game, but Lahaina just outplayed us down the stretch. That year we were super talented, we just didn't have depth and we just tired out against Lahaina."

But the teams weren't done with each other just yet.

After back-to-back losses against Kapaa and Saint Francis to open its 2017 campaign, Konawaena reeled off nine straight wins — including a win over Hilo and a perfect 8-0 league record — to set-up a rematch with Lahainaluna in the D2 state final.

The game was one for the record books. The teams staged an epic seven-overtime game over the course of more than four hours under the afternoon sun at Aloha Stadium. In the end, however, it was the Lunas who hung on for a memorable 75-69 win over the Wildcats.

Konawaena has not been back to the state tournament since.

Tthe Wildcats went 5-5 in 2018, the season following Ewing's graduation, which they opened the year with a 61-9 loss at perennial powerhouse Kahuku.

In 2019, they moved up to the D1 ranks in the BIIF and reached the league championship game. They finished 8-4 on the year and finished one win shy of a state tournament berth.

With the spread of positive COVID-19 cases across the state, but especially on Oahu, the HHSAA announced on August 5th that its executive board voted to postpone the start of moderate- and high-risk fall sports to January 2021. Sports affected include cheerleading, cross country, girls volleyball and football.

Despite the situation — which doesn't allow for any instructional or developmental sport-specific activity between coaches and student-athletes due to the HHSAA's extension of the "no-contact period" for all prep sports through Sept. 13 — Uemoto has reason to be optimistic with his bunch.

"I'm actually really excited about it. I see a lot of our players around town and they look good, they look like they're working out and I know they're excited and ready to go. We have a good group coming back and we sort of have that mindset right now of wanting it more than we ever have," Uemoto said.

It's a mindset that has been manifested through both the daily and long-term tribulations of navigating the current pandemic.

"I think our group today, they almost went through a process of potentially losing football and I think sometimes that's a wake-up call for people," Uemoto said. "I've never seen this kind of a sense of urgency with a group of players before; it's usually the opposite where we're telling guys, ‘hey, we're working out,' but now it's almost the reserve and I think that the threat of almost losing football made them miss it and the urgency is from them now, so I'm excited to see how this translates to our season."

If and when the prep football season gets underway, it will be Uemoto's fifth as coach at Konawaena.

"I think this will be a point of emphasis that we can always go back to as a program and say, ‘hey, remember 2020, when we almost lost football?,' " he said. "I think this could be something big for our program."