The scene was right out of a television sitcom. A huddled group of football players waiting for the coin toss. An Aloha Stadium crowd eager for the kickoff. And a woman in a muumuu and heels running onto the field, waving her arms and yelling at everyone to wait because her cable TV production crew wasn’t ready to broadcast its first televised high school sporting event.
Mitzi Lehano, vice president of programming and community affairs at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, won’t ever forget that moment. With Friday’s games, she’ll mark 25 years of broadcasting high school football. Looking back on it, she thinks she scared the referees.
"They didn’t know who I was," she said. "They were like, What the heck are you doing here? I got a very surprised, shocked look and they were probably a bit fearful. Who is this crazy woman coming out on the field?"
The cable channel, which took on its more recognizable branding OC16 in 1997, has come a long way since that first game. Not only does it broadcast football games live every Friday night during the season, but also high school basketball, soccer, softball, baseball, volleyball, wrestling, judo and track and field.
The cable channel broadcasts about 150 events a year, which also stream live online and to mobile devices.
That first broadcast in 1989 featured a doubleheader: Aiea High School vs. Leilehua High School followed by Roosevelt High School vs. Kahuku High School.
"It was a big, huge deal for us," Lehano said. "There was no high school sports on TV."
The idea surfaced when Hugh Yoshida, then executive secretary of the Oahu Interscholastic Association, asked Lehano what she thought of televising a football game. Lehano, who was — and is — passionate about football, said yes.
No one thought it was a daunting task, she said.
"We thought it was do-able and we were very excited and confident," Lehano said. "But being naive at the time was perfect. Little did we know what it took to get a broadcast on the air. There were so many moving parts."
A few too many as it turned out. With the coin toss about to take place, the show’s producer and director told Lehano she had to stop it. She ran out of the stadium’s north end zone tunnel, jumped into a golf cart and raced out to the field.
"That vision is pretty crazy when I think about it," Lehano said.
One of the players on the Aiea team was Nolan Tokuda, who now serves as head football coach at Leilehua. When the team learned it would be on TV, the novelty wasn’t lost on anyone, he said.
"When our coach told us we were going to be on TV, we were shocked," Tokuda said. "We were running around acting like we were superstars who were going to be on TV. And we were going to hand it to Leilehua. That didn’t happen."
Aiea lost, 23-7.
But the games are more than a final score, especially in Hawaii, where people are always asking each other where they went to high school.
"Culturally these games are a big deal," said Dave Vinton, OC16’s sports director. "They are the tie that binds communities and generations to generations."
But it’s even more than that. Lehano’s favorite story involves a former Kahuku football player who introduced himself at a game. He told her he had graduated from high school and college and he had her to thank.
It wasn’t because he got a football scholarship; he was an average player and Lehano didn’t even recognize his name. It was that he knew he needed to stop running with the wrong crowd and improve his grades to stay on the football team.
He wanted to be on TV on Friday nights on OC16.
And that’s a wrap …
Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.
