Sierra Canyon football player Madden Riordan said he kept on getting FaceTime calls on Monday from his dad, who was already in Hawaii. There was a lot of excitement about the Trailblazers’ game at Punahou School on Friday night — and vistas on a smartphone screen were just the beginning.
Family members had the opportunity to travel and several players boarded a plane for the first time in their life as Sierra Canyon flew to Hawaii on Tuesday to play the first game of a home-and-home series against Punahou, the back-to-back Interscholastic League of Honolulu champion.
“We’re locked in,” Sierra Canyon senior quarterback and Utah commit Wyatt Becker said. “We’re going to Hawaii, one of the best places on earth. People think it’s a vacation. Obviously, we’re gonna have fun, but in our minds, it’s a business trip. So we’re doing everything we can do to be ready to go out there and perform.”
While Riordan’s phone continued to light up, the Trailblazers were putting the finishing touches on fall training camp before beginning the season a week earlier than most other teams in the CIF Southern Section.
They’re starting early but will have two bye weeks later in the season to make up for it. Sierra Canyon had a similar routine when they played Green Valley in Nevada in 2022.
“It’s one week less of prep, obviously,” coach Jon Ellinghouse said. “But then it’s also kind of nice to be able to have a couple weeks during the season to recover and get healthy and all that, so there’s a little bit of give and take in it. But I liked it the last time we did it. Hopefully, I like it again this time.”
Punahou has already played one game and shut out Konawaena 35-0. Two quarterbacks took the field in Sean Connell (7 for 11, 92 yards, one touchdown) and Hunter Fujikawa (8 for 11, 89 yards, two touchdowns). Running back Nelson Aau rushed for 54 yards and two touchdowns.
Notre Dame commit Koo Kia logged 12 tackles and Iloa Kaio had six tackles.
“We’re just trying to move fast, trying to tire them out,” Sierra Canyon running back Dane Dunn said. “We’re just trying to work on ourselves moving fast, get the play, run a play and then get the next play.”
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Punahou kicks off a challenging nonleague schedule for Sierra Canyon that could make a case for them to be placed in Division 1 for the CIF-SS playoffs once again. The Trailblazers’ other nonleague games are against JSerra, Oaks Christian, St. John Bosco and Orange Lutheran.
The idea for the home-and-home series against Punahou started when Sierra Canyon athletic director Rock Pillsbury was in Hawaii for a volleyball tournament. He met with the school to discuss the possibility of two football games.
The next thing the Trailblazers knew, they were in the LAX lobby. No one missed the bus to get to the airport, but some traffic on the 405 freeway due to protestors did cause a roughly 40-minute delay.
A trip to Pearl Harbor is on the agenda as well as a team meal and beach time, which players think can help build team chemistry.
“That’s the biggest thing I would say, just coming together,” Riordan, a defensive back committed to USC, said. “We haven’t really had that big team bonding experience yet. These couple of days in Hawaii are gonna be probably big for us throughout the season.”
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