Lahainaluna Sports Shooter: MAUI FOOTBALL COMBINE

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

MAUI FOOTBALL COMBINE – June 15, 2012.

Rodney Yap of Hisportsfolio.com invited me to take photographs of the participants of his Maui Football Combine that was held on the Lahainaluna campus. This was the second year at the campus and I believe the fourth year overall for this Combine. Rodney does a great job of putting these things together – all with the purpose of helping Maui’s athletes achieve their dreams of going to college and playing sports at the collegiate level.

I understood other photographers were going to be at this event, including Ben Juan and Randy Jay Braun. Ben, I know, shoots a lot for Baldwin and Baldwin had a lot of athletes participating in the combine. Unfortunately I did not see Ben there. Randy is a very accomplished and successful professional photographer. It was intimidating just knowing he was going to be there. But his son, Jay Braun, is a beast of an athlete and just coming off his sophomore year at Seabury Hall. I understand he is transferring to King Kekaulike and maybe playing football for them. He is a beast – he sprints at a high level and is as strong as an ox. He runs a 4.6 forty, long jumps greater than 20 feet and bench presses 225 pounds 14 times. Wendy Osher of Mauinow.com was there with a video camera. Rodney had his older son Riley taking pictures as well. The Maui News also had a representative there but I think he was an intern.

With all these photographers around, I had no problem concentrating on Lahainaluna players only. After all, I am the Lahainaluna Sports Shooter, right? The only problem was, there was no way to differentiate the players (unless I knew them). The participants were given different shirt colors, depending on their grade (Junior, Sophomore, Freshman). I had to look up the pool assignments and try to get down their numbers.

Tactically, there were different testing stations on the field and back at the locker rooms. The field events were: 3-Cone Drill, Pro Agility Drill and 40 yard dash. The locker room events were: Bench Press, Grip Test, Vertical Jump. Bench press and Grip Test did not really make for exciting action shots. Plus, I wanted to take action shots on the beautiful green field. So I decided to concentrate on the field events and catch the different players as they made their rotations.

Lahainaluna was well-represented at the combine as well. In fact, Lahainaluna’s Lithe Pokipala-Waiohu was lone female participant. The volleyball/softball star handled herself quite well and outdid some of the boys! On the other end of the spectrum, Maui High had one total representative and even he has Lahaina ties.

Lahainaluna’s Tytus Lucas broke the MFC record in the Pro Agility drill with a time of 6.79, edging out Baldwin’s Keelan Ewaliko (6.81) and Lahainaluna’s Semisi Filikitonga (6.82). The previous record was 7.00.

Lahainaluna’s Kiko Fonohema broke the MFC record in the Vertical Jump with a leap of 36.5 inches. The previous record was 34.5 inches (Loupua Hafoka, Lahainaluna 2010). Kiko also was the top bench-presser at 185 pounds, with 19 reps – well short of the record of 26 reps at 185 pounds. Jay Braun was tops with 14 reps at 225 pounds – two reps short of the MFC record.