Size matters little when it comes to toughness on a football field, and Cody Cuba is a good example.
The Waiakea senior receiver stands 5 feet 7 and weighs 140 pounds, a few inches and a good hamburger steak heavier than last year.
As a freshman, Cuba broke his arm in his fourth junior varsity game. The next year, he fractured his collarbone in the third game.
Last season, he stepped up the varsity, and landed on the All-BIIF first team after a healthy season that included 450 receiving yards and four touchdowns.
“He’s a tough kid. He played through injuries the past couple of years,” coach Moku Pita said. “He shows up every day.”
Stats, of course, don’t always paint a clear picture. Cuba brings more to the table than pass-catching skills and a solid work ethic.
Chemistry counts, even if it’s in the form of Comedy Central.
“Cody and (fellow receiver) Hunter Rapoza are brothers on the field,” Pita said. “Cody is the Ying to Hunter’s Yang. They’re clowns and always playing around in practice but in a good way. They’re always challenging each other, how many passes each is going to catch and touchdowns.”
With a last name similar to a country famous for producing baseball players, Cuba never had much interest swinging a bat, kicking a soccer ball or playing another sport that better fits the undersized.
He has a background of Filipino, Hawaiian and Portuguese (no Cuban ancestry despite his last name), and started playing Pop Warner in the sixth grade. It immediately fit Cuba, like a pair of touchdown-catching gloves.
“I like the contact, and I wanted to play a sport I know best,” said Cuba, who carries a 3.0 grade-point average and has part of his future figured out.
He’s looking to play ball and join the track and field team at Sacramento State, where he would major in marine biology.
A love of the ocean is tied into an early favorite memory with his dad Len Cuba, who works for T&T Electric.
“My dad likes to work on cars. I can take an engine apart and put it back,” Cuba said. “When I was 7 years old, he was teaching me how to dive, and that’s my favorite memory with him.
“It was kind of scary because instead of the shallow he took me to the deep, where you couldn’t see the bottom. When I could see the fishes and the marine life, I loved it.”
That sense of adventure opened the door for Cuba to become a pole vaulter on the Waiakea track and field team.
“The team didn’t have pole vault for a couple of years and last year they had it and I wanted to try,” Cuba said. “It was fun. It wasn’t really scary. All my attempts were clean.”
Though a relative novice, Cuba applied sufficient hard work into the technical aspect of using a long, flexible pole to vault over a parallel bar high in the air.
He was good enough to clear 11 feet and take third at the BIIF championships. Alas, at the HHSAA state championships, experience counts. Cuba improved to 12 feet, but finished second-to-last.
Should Cuba reach his destination college, he’ll find high standards at Sac State, which plays in the Division I Big Sky Conference. Last season, the Hornets were 7-5, including 4-4 in the conference. All of the school’s pole vaulters have cleared 15 feet.
Those are challenges to think about down the road.
There are more immediate concerns, like helping the Warriors end a championship drought that stretches over a decade.
Last season, Waiakea finished with a 2-6 record and lost to Kealakehe 39-25 in the BIIF Division I semifinals.
The Warriors last won a BIIF title, or more accurately co-shared the league crown with Konawaena, in 2001 when both schools concluded with the same record. (Waiakea won the head-to-head and represented the league at states.)
Cuba knows that the first step toward a championship run starts at practice, the foundation for unexpected glory, much like his BIIF pole vault bronze.
“When game time comes, we’ll play our hardest and everything we learn at practice we’ll put into the game,” he said. “The key for us is everybody does what they’re supposed to do, work hard on and off the field, in the classroom.
“Hilo (two-time defending BIIF champion) still has a lot of good players. But we have a lot of good players here, too. Anything can happen. You have to enjoy high school football. It’s a one chance in a lifetime.”
