The 2007 prep season will always be remembered for coach of the year Nolan Tokuda bringing up a quarterback from the junior varsity team named Andrew Manley, who took a 4-4 Mules squad to an OIA and state title. This was also the last season a team not named Kahuku or Mililani won an OIA title in Division I.
When it came time to determine the All-State teams, however, the newspapers were very different.
The Honolulu Advertiser went with a repeat selection in Saint Louis quarterback Micah Mamiya as its offensive player of the year. Mamiya went 22-1 as a starter in two years for the Crusaders, losing his only game to Manley in the state final.
Leilehua linebacker Russell Siavii was named the defensive player of the year.
The ILH swept the Star-Bulletin’s top awards with Punahou junior linebacker Manti Te’o winning the defensive player of the year honor and Damien running back Kama Bailey nabbing the offensive award.
Bailey’s 2007 season is one of best numbers wise for a running back ever. He is one of just four running backs in history to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season. In seven ILH games, he was held to less than 140 rushing yards only once (against Saint Louis) and totaled 313 rushing yards against Punahou and 370 yards against Pac-Five in his final two games. Bailey averaged 204.5 yards per game with 22 total touchdowns.
Te’o, Siavii and Kahuku’s Paipai Falemalu provided an impressive trio of unanimous selections at linebacker on both of the All-State first teams.
Mililani’s Taz Stevenson was the only sophomore selected to either first team, making the Advertiser’s squad as a receiver.
For a listing of all prep football all-star teams over the years that have been posted, click here.
Doubleclick the images to zoom in.
Subscribers to the Star-Advertiser can search full-page archives going back two years for free (pages are not available on the archive for 30 days after publication) at Newspapers.com. To access digitized newspapers from farther back — all the way to 1840 — subscriptions to staradvertiser.newspapers.com are available for $7.95 per month or $29.95 for six months.
Thanks for doing all this research on all-star teams. Awesome job. Can you do baseball too? We’ve had some great ball players from this State. Quite a few MLB players.
no way Leilehua should have won the state football championship that year. St Louis clearly had better players. You gotta hand I to Nolan Tokuda and his fabulous coaching. How many times did his Leilehua teams knock favored Kahuku out of the state football tournament?