Recruiting season for high school athletes comes at the same time in Hawaii as everywhere else in the United States, but the difference isn’t in the timing, it’s in the size of the opportunity.
Recruiting season for high school athletes comes at the same time in Hawaii as everywhere else in the United States, but the difference isn’t in the timing, it’s in the size of the opportunity.
You aren’t in a tank-of-gas distance from a dozen 5-star recruits. This isn’t South Florida, Texas or California. Big Island athletes need the physical skills everyone else has, but then they need a little more.
“Basically, if you want to play somewhere in college, you have one shot at it,” said Paka Davis, a non-playing, redshirt freshman at Texas Christian University from Kamehameha-Hawaii Schools. “The more you have to offer, the better chance you have to go somewhere you really want to go.”
For the seniors in the middle of it right now, it’s too late, what’s done is done, but for all the others, there are choices to be weighed against their scholarship dreams, and it’s a pretty simple self-exam.
Consider the shining example of academics, athletics and social responsibility, former University of Hawaii quarterback Marcus Mariota, now starting for the Tennessee Titans. Mariota was the whole package, everything a school recruiting a top player would want, but that’s what made him exceptional. With bad grades, no community outreach, just his athletic ability, it’s inconceivable he would be where he is today.
“When you grow up in Hawaii, you need to give (recruiters), something that says, ‘Hey, look at me, look at who I am,’” Davis said in a telephone conversation last week. “I found out, if it’s even close in athletic ability, they will always take the one with the better grades and really, even if you aren’t near the athlete as someone who doesn’t have good grades, you have a much better chance of finding a place that works for you.”
Davis was 6-foot-2, about 195 when graduated from Kamehameha two years ago. Today, he’s the same height and weighs 242 on the roster as a defensive end at Texas Christian University, having been granted the opportunity to be a walk-on. All of this came about after Davis visited a college fair at his school and met a guy from TCU who was looking for applicants.
Only later, Davis realized it wasn’t just anyone, it was the Dean of Admissions he’d spoken with and later than that, he was told the same individual had doubled back and talked to teachers and coaches at Kamehameha about this kid. With a 3.9 grade point average, Davis got his scholarship.
“I wanted to play DI football,” Davis said, “and there’s no way I would have had a chance without my grades. We’re at a disadvantage in Hawaii because it’s so far away and the population isn’t all that much so you have to be the kind of incoming student they’re looking for.”
Paka Davis checked off all the boxes. He hasn’t yet played in a game after a redshirt season a year ago but this season he’s been on the scout team, making an impact. Scout team players make the team better when they understand the approach of this week’s opponent and they use those techniques to try to beat their own teammates. Davis has gone from an unknown walk-on to a scout team player that drives the starters nuts and brings smiles to the coaches.
His time is coming at TCU, but as Paka Davis considers the future, he keeps stressing the past, how his parents — Kevin and Donna Davis — kept him, his three sisters and his younger brother invested in academics and athletics. All five are in universities with academic and/or athletic scholarships.
“We moved from Kona to Volcano, to the rain forest, so they would all have better opportunities (at Kamehameha),” Kevin Davis said. “We wanted them all playing different sports every year, digging hard into the books, we constantly talked about academics and athletics as the key to college, really, the key to their lives. It was a blessing that they all bought in.”
By the time the TCU representative came to his school, Paka Davis was ready.
The payoff will be felt the rest of Paka Davis’s life, but it didn’t take long for the short-term payoff to hit.
“Hard to express,” he said, “but coming from an island where you never play in a stadium with wraparound seating, to go to a place with that and multiple decks built up high above you, I was thinking about all that the first time, when I putting my pads on before the game.
“I remember thinking just before we went out, ‘I had this dream, now I’m living in it,’ and to run out there with the smoke and fireworks going off and the crowd roaring, being a part of this team you work for all week?
“It was an unforgettable experience, a memory for a lifetime,” he said.
Being recruited out of high school only happens once in a person’s life. You can hang it all on one aspect of who you are — your athleticism — or you can put every advantage possible in your corner, along with your athleticism and see what happens.
Best advice? If you really want it, be as ready as you can be when the opportunity comes around or you can probably say Aloha to any interest from recruiters.
(Contact Bart with comment on someone or some thing you know at barttribuneherald@gmail.com)