Thirty minutes after dropping a pass during Wednesday’s football practice, University of Hawaii receiver Makoa Camanse-Stevens still was annoyed.
“Dropping one,” Camanse-Stevens fumed, “is one too many.”
He added: “Last year, I was a walk-on, and they really weren’t expecting anything from me. This year, there are higher expectations. I’m on scholarship now. It’s my job now. I have to catch balls. I have to make plays. I have to be a perfectionist because of how hard my teammates and coaches are working.”
He vowed to put in extra work catching passes from the JUGS machine. Being active is his release; punishment is being idle.
“I can’t sit still,” he said.
That was evident a year ago, when friends convinced him to pose for a Men of Hawaii calendar. “It was a lot more difficult than people think,” he said. “You have to flex your whole body while keeping that stagnant face. It’s actually really hard (to hold a pose). I tried it, but it’s not my thing.”
Camanse-Stevens prefers to be motion. In 2015, he was used as a receiver (14.7 yards per catch), option passer (51-yard completion), punt returner and special-team defender (four tackles). This training camp, he aligns as wideout, slotback and tight end.
Each day, Camanse-Stevens works on a unique hand exercise. He will tear a sheet of newspaper into strips, then rub them together with his fingers until they crumple to the ground.
“It strengthens my hands,” said Camanse-Stevens, who incurred a broken knuckle and ligament tears in his hands as a Kamehameha Schools basketball player. “I’ve crumpled newspapers since I started playing receiver (in junior college). You need strong hands, strong fingers.”
In addition to weight training and conditioning drills, Camanse-Stevens spends his free time hiking or surfing. “I’m always active,” he said. “That’s why I can’t gain any weight.”
A few weeks ago, Camanse-Stevens and teammate Ryan Tuiasoa made a 6-mile hike on the Moanalua Valley Trail to the backside of Stairway to Heaven on the Koolau Range. “It was clear skies when we were coming down,” he recalled.
But then the eastern half of what was Tropical Storm Darby swept across Oahu.
“We got caught in the storm,” Camanse-Stevens said. “We were on ‘Saddle Ridge’ — you can straddle it like a saddle. It was so thin. … It got really cloudy. We couldn’t see either side. The wind was blowing super hard. It was raining. We definitely were terrified.”
He said they waited for 45 minutes in hopes the storm would pass. It did not.
They then decided to begin their descent. “We were duck-walking the whole way because we didn’t want to get blown off the mountain,” Camanse-Stevens said, noting it took seven hours to complete the hike.
Camanse-Stevens, known for not backing away from challenge, conceded: “I’m never hiking in a storm again.”
