Kahale family’s vision leads to Molokaʻi’s historic MIL 11-player football debut tonight

Makena Kahale had yet to be born when his mom and dad sat down in 2009 to forge the strategic plan for the Moloka‘i High School football program.

Now 14 years old and a freshman wide receiver/defensive back for the Farmers, Kahale is on the first team to reach his parents’ big goal. Tonight, Moloka‘i will make its Maui Interscholastic League debut at the regulation 11-player level tonight at Sue Cooley Stadium against Lahainaluna.

“I’m going to have to play up to my last name,” Makena Kahale said of being the fourth and final Kahale son to make it to the Farmers football team.

His father Mike Kahale is the head coach, brother Kaimana Kahale is his position coach, and his mom Nichol Helm Kahale is the driving force for the team.

Middle brothers Kanalu Kahale and Nainoa Kahale also played for the Farmers at the eight-player level. Molokai won seven straight MIL eight-player titles before declaring in December that it would move to the 11-player level for the 2024 season.

When asked if there’s pressure being a Kahale on the Friendly Isle, Makena paused for a second: “Mhm, little bit,” he said.

Mike Kahale said this stop on the journey came into focus at a recent parent meeting, the first in-person meeting of team parents since the pandemic. That meeting brought some emotion from the parents of the program, Mike and Nichol.

Much of the inspiration for the program came from Larry Helm, Nichol’s father who passed away in 2013. He played for the school in the early 1960s when it last played 11-player football. Moloka‘i did not join the MIL until 1984.

“That parent meeting allowed myself and my wife, who was there from the beginning, to kind of just go over the history of the program and where we started,” Mike Kahale said. “Playing flag football that first year and borrowing equipment from St. Anthony.

“You’ve got to understand where you’ve come from to know where you’re going. … It also educated and let our parents know that, ‘Hey, this has been a process,’ something that we’ve been working for — it’s been a long road.“

That strategic plan — “It was more my wife than it was me,” Mike Kahale said — is still discussed at the Kahale family dinner table.

“She’s the one who had the idea and the vision, I thought she was crazy, but, yeah, she sparked an interest in the boys when she was teaching and then brought it home,” Mike Kahale said. “Then in the midst of our crazy lives and having a baby and building a house we decided to start a football program.”

At 5-foot-10, 130 pounds, Makena is now just one inch shorter than his oldest brother who graduated from the school in 2016 and played three years of college football at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., before getting a masters at the University of Utah and returning home to teach seventh-grade history at Moloka‘i Middle School.

Mike Kahale said Makena is “beginning to really appreciate, I think, what mom and dad have done and is really enjoying the game.”

“I talk about football everywhere,” Makena Kahale said. “My dad asks me about practice: ‘Was it good? Was it fun? How do you think you did at practice?’ Stuff like that.”

Having older brother as his position coach has helped strengthen a bond that is already strong between the oldest and youngest of the Kahales’ four boys.

“I’ve kind of seen all phases of the program, whether that is growing up with it, helping establish it, soliciting donations from businesses on Moloka‘i, playing in it, and now I’m at the stage of coaching in it, so the program is very close to heart to me and my family,” Kaimana Kahale said.

“Seeing it where it’s heading it seems like just the natural progression of where we always wanted it to go based off our action plan back in 2008, 2009. It’s kind of coming to fruition for us.”

The Farmers’ football journey began when eight-player football was floated as an idea in the MIL and started as a club, flag-football program in 2010 and 2011. It was sanctioned as a varsity sport for the league in 2012 as tackle football with eight players per team on a condensed playing field.

Moloka‘i joined those ranks with Hana, Lāna‘i, Seabury Hall and St. Anthony in those early days, and the schools were later joined by Kīhei Charter for a few years.

Now, for the first time in nearly three decades the MIL will have six teams playing at the 11-player level, three in Division I and three in Division II. Moloka‘i has a roster of 41 players and is in Division II, along with Kamehameha Maui and King Kekaulike, which both have more than 100 players out for football for the varsity and junior varsity ranks. 

The Farmers have challenges. They are the smallest school in the MIL that plays 11-player football, with 381 students in the high school this year. They live on an island that has only one mode of transport off the island, Mokulele Airlines. And, they must sleep in gyms when they play games on Maui.

Saturday night after their game, the Farmers will sleep in the Lahainaluna gym. They have booked five nine-seat planes through Mokulele for the contingent of players, coaches and athletic trainers to travel. 

Mike Kahale said the trip costs between $8,000 and $9,000, about $200 per person. The school uses funds from its state Department of Education budget to pay for 36 seats and the football booster club pays for the last nine seats on funds collected in various fundraising activities.

“The coaching staff is super excited, the boys are pumped as well, and the community, I run into a lot of different guys and they’re like, ‘Oh, you guys going to be playing, oh, Lahainaluna, Baldwin, Maui High?’ No other Moloka‘i teams are playing out of their (division). It’s not the Seabury, Hana, Lāna‘i group, so they’re super excited,” Mike Kahale said.

The Farmers’ turnout for their first 11-player MIL season was slow. On July 26, the fifth day of workouts, the Farmers had just 27 players, but now they have to designate a “travel team” for their plane seats. The Farmers, who will not field a junior varsity team, have had rosters hovering around 50 the last few years for their eight-player seasons.

“There were some doubts early on when we started the season that I wouldn’t quite have the numbers that I thought I would,” Mike Kahale said. “We’re definitely smaller than what we have been in the past in terms of numbers, but skill-wise I think we’ve got some good guys who are going to go out there and compete at a high level.”

Kahakoi Lopez, a 5-9, 165-pound senior who has previously been a wide receiver, will start at quarterback against the mighty Lunas, who have won 44 MIL games in a row dating back to the 2016 season. While Lunas fans always pack their stadium, Mike Kahale knows of several Friendly Isle fans making arrangements to take boats to West Maui for the historic game.

“I think we’ll see some Moloka‘i fans over there,” Kahale said. “We’ve got a big Moloka‘i contingent on Maui already.”