GREENBELT, MD. » The University of Hawaii football seniors have collectively vowed to step up as leaders.
"On every team, it starts with the senior leadership," said quarterback Sean Schroeder, a fifth-year senior who will start against Navy on Saturday. "We’ll take it on and accept the challenge."
In the aftermath of the Rainbow Warriors’ 47-10 loss to Utah State last Saturday, coach Norm Chow told the team: "Everybody needs to step up their game, even myself."
On Wednesday, Chow said: "When I made that statement, I challenged everybody — coaches, seniors, players and myself. None of us felt good about what happened last Saturday. We’re all to blame. We need to accept that responsibility and get this leadership going. Everybody has to step up and do it."
The seniors, in particular, embraced the challenge. They even requested their own meeting this week.
"As a senior for this team, you want to lead by example and vocally," safety John Hardy-Tuliau said. "We’re going to do a little more of that this weekend."
Wide receiver Chris Gant said: "We accept (the challenge) collectively. We understand things have to change. Obviously, things aren’t working for us. It starts from within and spreads out. Nice guy is over. It’s definitely a challenge. I’m not the type to back away from a challenge. I’m going to step forward. If I have to be that senior, I’ll be that senior."
Of his seniors, Chow said, "This is their team. This is the team they’ll remember. The friends I played with my senior year of college are still my friends."
The Rainbow Warriors arrived in Maryland on Wednesday on the final leg of 10-day, four-city trip. They practiced on the Manoa campus, then traveled to Manhattan Beach, Calif., where they stayed overnight. Then they went to Logan, Utah, where they lost to Utah State. After the game, they made the 84-mile drive to Salt Lake City, where they trained through Wednesday morning. Then they took a direct flight to Maryland.
The Warriors essentially turned a commercial flight into a charter flight when they bought every seat on the Southwest Airlines aircraft.
"It was supposedly cheaper than a charter," Chow said.
Senior wide receiver Billy Ray Stutzmann endorsed the plan of staying on the mainland between road games.
"That would have been more difficult (to go back to Honolulu) and taken more time," Stutzmann said. "We would have had too much jet lag."
After arriving at the hotel, freshman wide receiver Keith Kirkwood took a deep breath, filling his lungs with football air.
"It’s perfect weather," said Kirkwood, who grew up in Neptune, N.J., which is 193 miles from the team’s hotel. "We’re back to the East Coast. It’s like home to me. I love when the seasons change. I love playing football in this weather. It’s good to be back."
It also is somewhat of a homecoming for receiver Kwamane Bowens, who was raised 221 miles away in Virginia Beach.
Bowens was eyeing the 2013 schedule when he signed with the Rainbow Warriors in February.
"It drove me to play as a freshman," said Bowens, who made the 64-player travel roster for each of the first four road trips. "I didn’t want to miss this opportunity."
The Warriors will practice this morning, then take separate tours this afternoon and then this evening.
"We’ll show them Washington, D.C.," Chow said. "A lot of them will never get this chance again. It’s important. It’s part of the education process."
