Football Match-up Pits Knights Vs. Friends At Saint Louis
By Jack Danilewicz
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Del.icio.usThe friendship between Castle coach Nelson Maeda and his counterpart at Saint Louis, head football coach Delbert Tengan, goes back to their days as students at Kailua High School in the 1970s, a time of “platform shoes and polyester pants,” as Maeda likes to say.
“We’re good friends - in fact, I just spoke to him this morning,” Maeda said.
As both teams prepared for their respective games last week, the two coaches exchanged tapes of one another’s upcoming opponents.
Such an arrangement works well when you’re not in the same league. This week, however, the situation is much different. Saint Louis visits the Knights Friday night (approximately 6:30 p.m.) for one of the more intriguing Oahu Interscholastic Association-vs.-Interscholastic League of Honolulu crossover match-ups. It will be only the third meeting between the schools in Maeda’s 10-year stint at Castle, and the first since they met in the 2002 state championship game (a 34-15 Crusader victory).
That meeting with Saint Louis won’t be of much help to the Knights in the preparation department, according to Maeda, who is quick to note that the Crusaders have hired new offensive and defensive coordinators in recent years.
“Schematically, they’re a different program,“he said.“Offensively, they run the shotgun option now.”
In terms of preparing for their OIA East-Red slate, the schedule-makers couldn’t have done better for Maeda, who wants his Knights to play the best teams they can play. In its pre-season opener Aug. 18, Castle met Campbell, which figures to be one of the state’s top offensive teams. Like their East Red rivals at Kahuku, in Saint Louis the Knights meet another one of the programs that set the standard in football excellence on the Island.
“They’re a top-notch program and one of the favorites - if not the favorite in the ILH,” said Maeda, who spent two years as an assistant within the Saint Louis program in the late ‘80s. “They also bring back a wealth of experience from last year, and their kids are very physical, so it’s going to be a good match-up for us. If you want to move forward with your program, you want to play the best. It motivates your team to get to that level.”
Maeda expected his team’s concentration to be crisp this week - much as it was last week when the Knights prepared for their league opener with Kalaheo. Missed opportunities had plagued the Knights in the aforementioned loss to Campbell and helped them to refine their work ethic last week, according to Maeda.
“My fear coming out of the Kapolei scrimmage was complacency,” Maeda said.“Campbell’s a tough team; they’re very good at what they do. They had a seven-minute drive against us, so we have to do better. It’s tough anytime you come off of a loss, but the positive is that it instills a fear in you to work harder so that you don’t go through an experience like that again.”
Offensively, the Knights “took a couple of steps backward” in the Campbell game, according to Maeda.
“We struggled (on offense) against Campbell with basic fundamentals -like maintaining blocks and dropped passes,“he said. “Hopefully, we’ve gotten that out of our system. We had 15 dropped passes in that game, which is almost unheard of, so we have to get back on track.”
One of the bright spots for Castle in the Campbell encounter was the play of two-way performers Corey Paredes and Scott Keiter-Charles.
“Corey played great (against Campbell), and Scott was very good in spurts,” Maeda said.“We count on both heavily.”
Both figure to need big games this week if the Knights are to have a chance against Saint Louis, which won 15 Prep Bowl titles and has won two Division I state championships.
“You have to play very sound, disciplined football against them and make them earn everything they get (on offense) because they’re going to move the ball,” Maeda said.“You can’t make mistakes against them. Otherwise, you find yourself too far behind in the fourth quarter.”
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