Tokuda’s Mules Are Scholars First, Players Second
By Jack Danilewicz
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Del.icio.usThe numbers that grab Leilehua head football coach Nolan Tokuda’s attention the most these days are not his team’s impressive defensive statistics or the Mules’ passing yardage, but grade-point averages.
“When you have kids who are accountable for their own education, it gives you more time as a coach to game plan,” he said. “It makes it a lot easier.”
Indeed, as the coaching staff and players prepared for last Friday’s state tournament playoff game with Baldwin, grade issues were not among their concerns. Since taking over the Leilehua program, Tokuda has made academics a high priority, and the results of those efforts have shown steadily. Entering last weekend, the 67-member team had a cumulative GPA of 2.95, up from the 2.90 it compiled at the end of last year’s state championship run in December. In 2004, the Mules’ combined GPA was at 2.4.
Of the players from the current Leilehua team, 18 currently are in honors courses, and 27 carry a GPA of 3.0 or higher.An additional four players have GPAs exceeding 4.0.
Tokuda credits the steady study hall schedule with creating good habits. In or out of season, Leilehua players all attend a team study hall every Monday and Wednesday from 7 to 8 p.m. Players who are struggling in the classroom, or are coming off a poor performance on a test as an example, attend study halls on Tuesday and Thursday nights for an hour-and-a-half as well.
“We take it seriously,” Tokuda said. “Every two weeks we have a grade check, and we’re strict about them. The coaches are diligent, and the kids are held accountable to their education.The first word in student-athlete is ‘student.’”
Tokuda also hopes keeping close tabs on his team academically helps instill time-management skills that will be beneficial in the future.
As a college student, he learned firsthand about the rigors of mixing school and sports, seeing his own GPA rise significantly to 3.8 his last year at UH-Hilo, after having completed his eligibility with the baseball team the previous year.
“It was a real challenge,“Tokuda said of balancing athletics and school.“Eventually, I learned how to study. It’s not what you study, but how you study. I learned to manage my time, and we send the same message to these kids about time management. They still have to take care of things at home, too. Family is first,academics is second and football is third with us. No. 4 is social time, which has all been sacrificed by then,“he added with a laugh.“We want the kids to leave as better people because they were in our program.”
Retired Texas Tech men’s basketball coach Bob Knight, who also was a longtime coach at Indiana where he won three national titles, used to say that a kid who didn’t go to class wasn’t smart enough to handle his system on the playing floor. Tokuda is of the same mind-set.
“I agree,” he said. “It takes discipline.”
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