With about 10 minutes remaining in Monday’s practice, more than a dozen first-year Hawaii football players jubilantly sprinted from the Ching Athletic Complex field to the locker room.
It is the last week of the fall semester, and they were ready to attack their first final exam as UH students.
It was one of the indications the Rainbow Warriors had emerged from the gloom of losing to Boise State in the Dec. 7 Mountain West Conference title game and were dually focused on academics and the Dec. 24 SoFi Hawaii Bowl against Brigham Young.
“They’re not all the way up yet,” coach Nick Rolovich said of the emotional deflation following the championship game. “That was as emotional a roller coaster as we’ve been on in this program. They’re very disappointed. … (On Sunday) we had a meeting about it. They have to get to the mind-set the next game is the most important. Boise was an important game for this program. It didn’t go the way we wanted. But that doesn’t give them the right to not take this (bowl game) seriously.”
Cornerback Rojesterman Farris II, a fifth-year senior, said the Warriors will not rue the one that got away.
“We got there,” Farris said, referencing the title game, “but the goal wasn’t to get there. It was to win. We didn’t do that. It’s not hard to get over. We have to flip our minds and just stop worrying about something we can’t control, something we can’t go back and change, and focus on the game in front of us.”
Facing a past rival — BYU — has provided some motivation. The last time the teams met at Aloha Stadium, in the 2017 regular-season finale, Rolovich showed the players videos of past meetings. There were the Garrett Gabriel-led victories in 1989 and 1990, the comeback effort that boosted the Warriors in an 11-2 Holiday Bowl season in 1992, the blowout to mar the previously unbeaten Cougars in 2001. That last outcome spurred the creation of the Hawaii Bowl.
“At least they know what it’s about, to some extent,” Rolovich said.
And while the teams are no longer members of the Western Athletic Conference — UH joined the Mountain West in 2012, BYU competes as an independent — the rivalry still reverberates among older fans.
When the Warriors interact with the public, Rolovich said, “that’s where they see how important it is to this place. It’s nice to play for something a little bit more than just a game. It’s nice to feel there’s an island behind you on this deal.”
Quarterbacks coach Craig Stutzmann, who played slotback for the Warriors, joked the rivalry was a birthright.
“I think I came out of the womb not liking BYU,” Stutzmann said. “I grew up right out the back gate (of UH’s lower campus). I knew everything about the rivalry between Hawaii and BYU. … My first memory was Garrett Gabriel putting it down on BYU, and throwing for a ton of yards and touchdowns. Growing up, we didn’t have that kind of money where we can go and watch the game live. I watched it on TV. Just seeing the confetti flying all around, and just understanding the games against BYU, makes a big difference.”
Stutzmann added: “If they’re not ready to play BYU on national television, they’re not true competitors.”
Quarterback Cole McDonald said: “There’s a lot of tradition in that rivalry game, a lot of emotions from past players until now. We’re always going to be ready regardless the stage, what team we’re playing. It’s always going to be us out there playing the Hawaii football we know how to play.”
