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Maeda’s Knightly Strategy

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Head football coach Nelson Maeda gives his Castle Knights a pre-game pep talk. Photo by Nathalie Walker, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

As Castle reaches the midway point of its OIA football season this weekend, it’s gone through enough drama for an entire season already - with extreme highs in wins over Radford (21-3)and Damien (35-0), sandwiched around a heart-wrenching, last-second defeat to Moanalua.

Last week’s Farrington game was the beginning of a key stretch, with a game this Friday versus Kaiser at home before a bye week. Games with Roosevelt, Kailua and Kahuku close out the season. Castle head coach Nelson Maeda recently took some time to answer some questions for the Knights Nation.

After three weeks, what aspect of your play has pleased you the most? That’s hard to say. We have lot of potential, but we are not a very disciplined bunch as of yet. The good thing is, we can only get better. We have a good group of seniors who provide solid leadership, but we need all to have the same goals.

What are you most focused on improving? We are striving to be as disciplined as we can be, doing everything we need to do - all the time and not some of the time. We need to be crisp, sharp, businesslike in our team play. Once we are at that point, we hope to elevate their team play to greater heights than what they thought they were capable of - team play where the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.

When you look at your upcoming opponents, what immediately comes to mind about them? The teams we’ll be facing are quite a challenge. Kailua and Kahuku have great size in the trenches, strong armed QBs and athletically skilled position players. The same can be said of Kaiser, last year’s D2 OIA champion. Roosevelt beat us last year quite handily and rises to the occasion. We need to be at our best week-in and week-out, being the most disciplined team we can be.

How did the kids respond when they returned to campus on Monday after the Moanalua loss? We knew going in what kind of challenge Moanalua presented: option football, great athletes, a solid QB, great size in the trenches, playing at home, etc. It was disappointing to lose in the waning moments. With fourth down and 48 yards, one would think we could stop them from getting a first down, but they made the plays to win the game. The loss places us in a very challenging position of having to fight our way out of the hole we are in. Every loss impacts the jockeying of the pecking order for the teams trying to make the top five in the division for the playoffs.

As at other positions, you have had a long list of stellar linebackers. How would you access your linebacker corps in 2010? We’ve had some great ones: Blaze Soares, Corey Paredes, Kawehi Sablen, Cory Daniel - all who have gone on to play at the next level. Cy Pana has the ability to carry on the LB tradition and legacy. We have a couple of other LBs who are converted DBs and bring speed and quickness to the position.

How much more have you been able to put in offensively with veteran quarterback Jaymason Lee returning? With Jaymason having one year under his belt with our offensive system, we have made a concerted effort to not out-coach ourselves and keep things simple for our passing game. We need all to adjust to the same defensive scheme we are facing where we can perform instinctively and not have to think. We lost all of our skill offensive athletes from last year - Kehano, Rogers, Reppuhn, Dawson, Paredes - and hopefully this year’s bunch will step in and be as consistent as they were.

Solid special teams play has always been a Castle trademark. How would you assess that phase? We’re striving to be better, as most teams don’t have the time to work on it during the summer. As a team, we must win the Special Teams phase in the game to have a chance to win. We have a young and upcoming kicker in Adam Aquino (No. 10) who has the abilities to be a good one for us.

Who if anyone on the roster has been a surprise in these first three weeks? Josh Kong (No. 12) has been very consistent for us as an SB and DB; Olycon Finau, a converted SB for the JV, has shown glimpses of potential at RB; Jacques Hough has made some big plays for us as a LB.