Moanalua football head coach Jason Cauley is going back to Alabama and he hopes to bring some of Hawaii with him.
He told Hawaii Prep World this week that what he learned about Hawaii and its people in his stay here will remain with him.
He talked about how he’ll miss his players the most, mentioning major offensive weapon Michael Feliciano and top-notch quarterback Alakai Yuen as a few of the many he learned to love.
“The players here, they will give you the shirts off their backs,” Cauley said.
Cauley, who went 7-11 in two seasons, will have the expected Hawaii stories to tell his Alabama friends — about beaches and sunsets, etc. — but the one he’ll tell the most will be this:
“After running them (the players) into the ground at practice, they stand there in line and wait to give you a hug and say ‘thanks coach’ and tell you that they love you.”
Cauley added that in Alabama, he remembers players wanting to get as far away from the coach as possible after a grueling practice.
Cauley spent time as the offensive coordinator of his brother Rick Cauley‘s team at Murphy High in Mobile, Ala., before coming to Hawaii. He was an assistant at Moanalua and Kapolei here before landing the job as Na Menehune’s head man.
He plans to coach again someday and said he and his wife have thought about opening their home in Montgomery, Ala., to a qualified player from Hawaii wanting to experience high school football there.
During an interview earlier this week, Cauley brought up some interesting points about high school football in Alabama. According to Cauley:
>> More than a handful of football head coaches earn more than $100,000 per year.
>> More than 200 candidates applied for a recent football head coaching opening.
>> The school system pays for lunch and breakfast for high school athletes during the season.
>> Football players attend a class about football for the last hour and a half each day, where they do film work and go over X’s and O’s.
Cauley also said that the public school lunches in Hawaii do not meet the nutritional needs of athletes who spend about 12 hours a day doing schoolwork and participating in sports.
But that was the only negative he could think of. Everything else about Hawaii, he said, he enjoyed immensely.
“The aloha spirt is real,” he said. “And if everyone did things like they did in Hawaii, the world would be a better place.”
SEND HIS INFO TO ILH AND OIA. ALSO SLAP THEIR HEADS.