As a Hauula resident and Alumni of Kahuku we are Red Raiders and not North Shore. “Red Raider for Life” refers to the diehard commitment we have to the High Schools sports teams (more particularly football) as former players and now as parents of current players. The term “Red Raider for Life” was adopted by the NFL Oakland raiders who coined that phrase “Raiders for Life”, we adopted it because of the similarity of the word RAIDERS, now days you see other football schools around Hawaii that use the same phrase “trojan for life”, “sabers for life”, “mules for life”, which is ridiculous because there is no similarity to the word raiders so we just take it as a compliment that they copy us. Another deeper meaning to the saying “Red Raider for Life” and how it all started is when Siuaki Livai became the head coach and started winning championships, Siuaki is a Alumni and for us to have an Alumni at the head of the ship leading us to a football championship reinforced the whole meaning of what it was to be a born and bred “Red Raider”, after him Coach Reggie Torres took over and he also is an Alumni that took us to win state titles so as you can see we rose to the top by using our own players and our own coaches. Once again “trojan for life”, “sabers for life”, “mules for life” are schools that do not have their own alumni as head coaches so they really can’t relate or understand what it means the be “For Life!”.

We take football very serious and we train our boys from a young age to represent Red Raider football when they get older. If you think about our distance from any other major towns and cities we are really isolated and we feel that we are ostracized from the rest of Oahu. When many of our star football players transfer or get “recruited” to play at a private school we are disappointed almost to the point of feeling betrayed, however these star players are our friends and neighbors and we cant hate them so instead of pointing the blame on them we point it at the source of their transfer, the private schools who headhunt and pick the best athletes from our community to go and play for them.

As a former player myself divisiveness has always existed on the field, if you are not wearing red you are my enemy no matter where you from. Football is a gladiator sport so if you think hugs and kisses are going to prelude the competition then you are wrong. However after the game and after the season of course we are friends with everyone, in fact those kids that transfer to private schools are our sons, cousins, nephews.

Like Coach Leslie stated he’s still trying to figure out the culture of the community and the school, if he does his job as he says he will then that will mean more of our kids will graduate with higher gpa’s and more will get football scholarships and as a parent myself I can agree to that and understand why our principal had to make this change.

RR4L