The feeling doesn’t leave. It seems to grow stronger, and as time goes by, you are aware it’s ceaseless, craving your attention.
You’re going through a morning checklist of your daily appointments, and it keeps you company. Patient always, and always there, it’s the unspoken feeling in the backdrop of everything you do. It feels like the itch you can’t quite scratch but it’s telling you to give it a try, maybe you can.
So when Hilo High School football coach Kaeo Drummondo recently announced he was stepping down after winning the school’s first state championship just a few months earlier, his announcement was not a big surprise for those close to him.
It wasn’t about proving he could take Hilo from the wide portion of generally competitive schools in the BIIF to the championship of the State of Hawaii. This was the first time a Big Island school has won it in the 19 years of the current playoff format, but Drummondo’s decision was about an opportunity to continue building a fire inside that was set a few years back at Hilo High.
In some sense, the decision to coach linebackers at Santa Rosa Junior College wasn’t about that school, either. He is following his own advice. Drummondo asks players to challenge themselves, to find out how good they can be. He wants to find out how good a coach he can be, at the collegiate level.
A police officer with a masters degree in criminal justice, Drummondo loved his time coaching the Vikings. He went from not being certain he could handle a head coaching position a few years ago to taking the plunge and discovering a whole new world waiting for him.
Once he realized he could do this job, the possibilities of doing more flooded his senses. Think of it this way — in one point of his life, Bruce Springsteen wanted to play the guitar, and after he did, the world expanded. He played and wrote and sang and out came things like this:
“You spend your life waiting/ For a moment that just don’t come/ Well don’t waste your time waiting …”
When Kaeo Drummondo realized he was qualified to do this, to lead young football players with an understood common purpose, he realized he found his calling in life.
He wasn’t the only one who came to that realization.
Former offensive coordinator and current state legislator Chris Todd saw immediately what kind of person and coach Drummondo had become. Last week, Todd posted a note on his Facebook page that included this memory from years earlier:
“Coach Kaeo called a team meeting and instead of talking football, he spoke from the heart about a close friend who had passed away. One by one, most of our coaches and players talked through everything from personal loss to broken relationships with family. Tears were shed and despite all of the ups and downs of a football season (including winning a State title and being diagnosed with cancer), this was easily the most emotional time in my eight years as a coach.
“I’ve spent 10 years as a football coach and player at Hilo High, and I haven’t met anyone but Kaeo Drummondo who so deeply understood what young men entering adulthood NEED. It’s difficult enough to figure out what our players WANT, but to always provide what was needed, be it tough love, emotional support, or a good joke, is such a rare talent.”
That’s a pretty strong statement from an elected official who knows Hilo and Hilo High football as well as anyone. If anything, Todd sounded even more convicted in his thoughts of Drummondo a few days after that post.
“He transformed lives,” Todd said in a telephone interview. “It’s not common at all to see coaches like him; there is usually this kind of invisible wall we all have between player and coach, you know, ‘I give the instruction and the discipline and you need to follow along,’ but Kaeo isn’t like that.
“He will be the first to let kids into his life, to talk about personal struggles and let them know it’s OK to get that stuff out. There’s a lot of tears along the way, but there are smiles and understanding and there’s a bond that adds incredible strength to your team.”
Drummondo played two years at Santa Rosa so he’s not flying blind into the opportunity. He took phone calls from coach Lenny Wagner who had some staff turnover and eventually, Drummondo made the heavy decision to go be a linebackers coach at a Northern California junior college.
This is not starting out as the defensive coordinator at, say, Alabama. But it is just what Drummondo needs.
“I’ll have to find a job, you can’t move a family and live on that salary,” he said, “so there will be a lot of things going on. I need to familiarize myself with the players, go through tape on all of them, learn more about the coaching staff, find a place to live, see if I can get some transfer work going (on his police job), then I’ll have to get some kind of at least temporary job.”
Drummondo listed all the critical things he needs to do between now and August when football kicks again. He paused a moment, considering the path forward.
“It’s bittersweet,” he said. “This is home. We have security here. We have family and friends and I have a great job, a job I love.
“But it has become a career for me, and I have always wanted to coach college players, I think I could do it.”
The hardest part of all this was not making the decision. At 32, Drummondo knows as a college coach, especially at the JUCO level, he’s getting a late start. Most coaches come out of their college careers, get a graduate assistant role somewhere and then catapult that into a full-time assistant job at age 23 or so.
Drummondo is almost 10 years behind those coaching paths so, yeah, if you’re going to do it, then go do it, already.
“Football has been part of my life since I was 7 years old,” he said. “Leaving the security of home, a job you love and life you want to try to pursue these career goals? It was tough, but not as tough as explaining to players and parents and friends.”
“The toughest part is going public with it,” he said, “and I understand everyone has their opinions on what you should or shouldn’t do. We won the state championship and we heard complaints about playing time or this and that.
“I just feel I need to find out where I fit. The easiest thing would be to stay here and keep working on the program being in the community and all the rest.”
Sometimes home is where you belong.
Other times, you need to go find your place in the world.
Home will always be here for him.
Mahalo. Aloha. IMUA.
Whistleblower or other tips? Questions? Contact Bart at barttribuneherald.com