Even when the mercury is sweating and the practices are grueling, offensive lineman Alesana Sunia gives thanks for each day as a University of Hawaii football player.
“Everything we have here,” Sunia said, gazing across the UH’s grass practice field, “we don’t have back in the islands. I definitely appreciate every little thing we have here.”
For Sunia, who was born and reared in American Samoa, the grass is not only greener in Manoa, it is softer.
“Back home, we’re very poor,” Sunia said. “We’re glad to have this — clean grass and turf. We never had that sort of experience back home.”
In the past decade, American Samoa has emerged as a hotbed for football recruiting. The Rainbow Warriors’ roster includes six players who grew up in the U.S. territory.
Although the coaching has improved and the sport is now considered more than a fourth option behind rugby, basketball and volleyball, American Samoa’s practice conditions still are grounded in the past.
On the practice fields at high schools and parks, Sunia said, “you see rocks. That’s how we were raised in the sport of football.”
There even are rocks strewn on the field at Veterans Memorial Stadium, where the majority of high school games are played.
“I feel it’s still the same,” said UH defensive tackle Eperone Moananu, a 2015 Tafuna High graduate. “I went back last summer, and it was still rocks. I guess you have to push through it.”
Sometimes nails can be found on the field.
“We were getting cuts,” Moananu recalled of his Tafuna practices and games. “We had to pick up all the nails and stuff before we even went on the field.”
UH linebacker Scheyenne Sanitoa said: “For the field I grew up on, it was straight gravel and rocks, like different size of rocks. All that mattered to us was to come out and have fun with each other and play.”
Sanitoa said there were no points of comparison to know the fields were inferior.
“When you’re born and raised in Samoa, you don’t really see it like that,” Sanitoa said. “You see it as a regular field. You want to get better and you just want to play. … Everyone would leave practice with a bunch of cuts and bruises. We would always come back the next day waiting to get better. It made everyone tougher. It made everyone invincible to all the wounds we were getting, the small cuts and stuff.”
Sanitoa noted the popularity of football in American Samoa coincided with the growing opportunities to play NCAA football. A generation earlier, joining the military was a strong option for recent high school graduates.
“There were small options for a lot of kids back then,” Sanitoa said. “They probably had a smaller picture of what the future would be for them. Football has changed that. It’s just opened a lot of windows for kids in Samoa. It opened up their minds to see and know there’s more out there for them to do.”
In recent years, there have more football camps conducted in American Samoa. Many of the players also have traveled to the mainland and Hawaii to participate in summer football camps.
“I feel football is a real big sport there now, especially since we’re getting scholarships,” Moananu said. “People are trying to get the kids to work on their techniques and stuff so we look better when the coaches come over to recruit.”
For many, the growth of football in American Samoa was inevitable.
“We love the sport,” Sanitoa said. “We’re just born to play, I guess.”
