Kekoa Kaluhiokalani is Waianae’s new athletic director.
Kaluhiokalani took over the post in April, succeeding Glenn Tokunaga who stepped down at the end of the 2015 school year. Kevin Nakamoto was the interim athletic director until the official hire of Kaluhiokalani.
A former high school football, basketball and baseball player, Kaluhiokalani is a 1990 Waianae graduate. He coached the Waianae baseball team as an assistant from 1996 to 2002 and as the head coach from 2003 to 2014. His son, Kekoa Kaluhiokalani Jr., was a quarterback for the Seariders football team and a pitcher/shortstop for the baseball team a few years ago.
The elder Kaluhiokalani also played quarterback in his high school days as well as shooting guard/small forward for the basketball team and pitcher/first baseman for the baseball team. He was an assistant AD at the school for six years.
“I’m excited and inspired,” he told Hawaii Prep World on Wednesday. “The biggest thing for me is centralizing the core values to our whole department, making sure our programs all have the same foundation of core values.”
He listed pride and tradition, respect and humility as among the core values
“We’ve had a campaign here at Waianae for about a year now called ‘Waianae strong,’ and it’s building some serious momentum with everybody speaking the language. It is about being resilient and the whole gamut of what strength means, overcoming adversity throughout your life, and sports is a good teaching tool for that.
“The staff and the community has embraced me, so I will do anything to help our programs and build them, making Waianae student-athletes strong citizens, academically and socially.
It’s about time, the community has wanted Kaluhiokalani for years. Glen Tokugawa was in it for his pension, not the kids or greater good of the community.