By Dennis Anderson
Advertiser Staff Writer
Rocky Alo, who helped lead Kailua into the first state football tournament in 1999, said yesterday that he will transfer from Brigham Young to Western Oregon in the fall.
"I don’t feel comfortable in the environment here. I don’t feel like I belong here," Alo said from Provo, Utah.
He red-shirted last season and played on the scout team. BYU has given him his release, Alo said, so he will have four years to play four at Western Oregon.
"I think I would have gotten some playing time next fall (at BYU)," Alo said. "They wanted to move me to fullback." At Western, which became a fully certified member of NCAA Division II last fall, he is expected to play tailback.
Alo was the O‘ahu Interscholastic Association 200-meter dash champion and honorable mention all-state running back in 1999.
Tim Bowman (McKinley ’77) is offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at Western Oregon.
The Wolves had eight players from Hawai‘i last season. Senior Gideon Aliifua (St. Louis ’97) of Pearl City was a three-year starter at defensive tackle.
SWIMMING
 Coming through: In Big Ten Conference swimming, beating Indiana is a watermark, if you will excuse the expression.
Going into the last two events of last month’s Big Ten championship meet, Northwestern was in a battle with Ohio State, Indiana and Purdue for an upper-half finish.
Senior Jason Merchant (Punahou ’97) of Pearl City scored points in the 200-yard butterfly, the second to last event, to help Northwestern’s cause. He was also a member of the 400 freestyle relay team, the final event of the meet, but Merchant seemed to have spent himself in the butterfly so coach Bob Groseth told Merchant he could "opt out" of the relay.
Nothing doing. He swam, Northwestern set a school record, and took fifth place in the meet. "He finished off his Big Ten career in grand style," Groseth said.
At the NCAA championships later, Merchant placed 12th in the 200 butterfly in 1:48.49 and helped the 400 freestyle relay team place sixth.
He swam in the Olympic Trials in the 200 butterfly last summer.
Merchant, a biological sciences major, swam career best times of 21.30 in the 50 freestyle and 49.60 in the 100 butterfly at Big Tens.
He was a three-time state high school champion in the 100 butterfly.
"It was a privilege to have him, like all the kids we’ve had from Hawai‘i, and we are looking forward to having more," said Groseth, who brings his team to Hawai‘i to train every other year over Christmas break.
NCAA III: Junior Carla Fellezs (Kamehameha) of Mililani swam on three relay teams, which placed fourth, sixth and seventh, and finished 15th in the 100-yard freestyle in 53.46 seconds to help Puget Sound (Wash.) take ninth place in the NCAA Division III Championships last weekend in Buffalo, N.Y. Fellezs qualified in eight events, but rules permitted her to compete only in four.
SOCCER
Memory-maker: Brian Ching’s first professional goal will be all the more memorable because he scored it in Japan. Ching (Kamehameha ’96) of Hale‘iwa, a second-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer, scored during a preseason exhibition tour.
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