After the first week of high school football, it appears that Radford is easily the best of a bad lot.
The OIA White went 1-8 in the first week of the season, and a lot of the cross-league games were not even close. The teams in the lower division gave up an average of 33 points over the weekend, and that is counting two points for Roosevelt’s forfeit to McKinley. The hardest hit were Nanakuli with 56 points to Kapaa, and Kalani, which allowed 51 to fellow Division II member ‘Iolani.
Pro golf has its “best player to never win a major,” and prep football in Hawaii has its “team that should not be in D-II.” Both titles are unofficial, but talked about with passion. ‘Iolani has been Lee Westwood for years, but this year it was supposed to be hyped Kaiser until the Cougars were beaten down by Campbell at home.
After the Father Bray Classic, it is obvious that Radford is the team to beat in Division II. The Rams showed off a skilled veteran quarterback (Cody Lui-Yuen), two punishing running backs (Tobias Powell and Rashone Osborne) and two dependable receivers (Absolom Henry and Jameson Pasigan) to go with a defense that had the Wolfpack reduced to a one-dimensional group hoping for a big play.
West is best
But the OIA White is supposed to get trounced when it steps up; that means the divisions are correct. The OIA West is not supposed to be so much better than the East.
But after one week, it is.
The OIA West went 5-0 and outscored opponents 170-39. Any team can win in any given week, of course, but it was how they did it that set the West apart. Waianae put 33 points up on Farrington, while Aiea blew out Kailua and Mililani had its way with Moanalua.
All three of those interleague games were supposed to be close affairs. Maybe the West will be brought down to Earth this week when Mililani hosts Punahou, Pac-Five visits Aiea and McKinley travels to Kapolei. The West’s two idle teams in week one get tough matchups in their openers, with Leilehua visiting ‘Iolani and Waipahu hosting Kaimuki.
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