Monday, September 29, 2008

Scouting Trip


University of Southern California Trojans football Head Coach Pete Carroll was in town with two of his assistant coaches Brennan Carroll (tight ends & recruiting) and Ken Norton Jr (linebackers) to scout Punahou School's senior linebacker Manti Te‘o, among other potential prospects. Te‘o also happens to be the #1 high school linebacker in the entire country. The Punahou Scholl Buff-n-Blue hosted the Kamehameha Schools (Kapalama) Warriors this past Friday evening as the feature game (of an ILH double-header) at Aloha Stadium. The Buff-n-Blue beat the Warriors 28-6, before a crowd of over 4,000.

Coach Carroll and company arrived in Honolulu, after their 27-21 upset loss to the Oregon State Beavers, this past Thursday night. The trio watched Te‘o's stellar performance, who played offense (running back), defense (linebacker), and even special teams. Carroll's presence also attracted the media covering the game as well. Newspaper photographers and TV videographers got their shots of Carroll on the Punahou sidelines. Both Carroll and Norton signed autographs for the Punahou fans, who made their way down to the front railing. USC is one of five colleges who are vying for Te‘o's acceptance of a football scholarship. BYU, UCLA, Stanford and Notre Dame are the other four. In my five seasons on the Aloha Stadium Jumbotron crew, this was the first time I have seen a head coach from a major mainland college come to a Hawai‘i high school game to watch a prospect.

I got this photo of Pete Carroll and myself from a friend of Carroll, who was with the coaches. I was also the field level camera operator for this game.

1 comment:

Lori said...

It sounds like Te'o can do everything. I hope he gets lots of scholarship offers from top schools. I'm sure we'll be hearing about him in the future as his career takes off! Good shot of you with the coach!