Move up to next level right for Lee

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser columnist

The framed picture of the 2000 Interscholastic League of Honolulu champion St. Louis School team leans against a wall on the floor of the corner office in the Gerber Field House.

Along the mauka wall there is little room to wedge it in amid the other champions in Cal Lee's 20-year tenure.

It is a situation that suggests why Lee is willing to leave the job that has seen him become the winningest football coach in Hawai'i high school history.

It offers some insight into why, after the 2001 season, Lee says he will leave the only head coaching job he has known.

For there are few significant walls or prizes left for Lee to conquer in the high school ranks, a situation that has confronted him for some time now. Under his steady hand, the Crusaders have won it all — ILH, Prep Bowl and State championships.

So many that Lee, were he so inclined, could put a championship ring on each digit of both hands and very nearly both feet.

But that resounding success has come at a price. Lee built a program of national note at St. Louis, the likes of which we might never see matched here, and with it has grown a monster. Long ago it ceased to be news when St. Louis won. Championships and records have become as expected as the annual pilgrimage of college recruiters up Kalaepohaku.

But now there are opponents whose programs are dwarfed by the colossus that St. Louis has become and some who would prefer to forfeit rather than play the Crusaders. Now, offseasons are spent fighting roster limits or scrambling to try and find suitable competition.

As the championships mounted, so too have the frustrations. Time and again Lee has come to ask himself if the current season would be his last. You get the feeling the answers have come a lot harder of late. That the doubts have lingered longer with each season.

Like the time Lee admitted, more relieved than triumphant after the first state championship, "You look at all these people out here (in the stands). I mean, they put their faith, hope and trust in you. It is almost like I'm playing. And, I'm not."

At several points, notably that 1999 season that came with the fallout from the Las Vegas episode and a turbulent leadership change at the school, it seemed he would walk away.

But for a man loathe to leave Hawai'i to pursue a coaching career it has usually come back to the matter of limited options. There are few jobs here that would both fulfill him and not force him to take a whopping pay cut.

And, they are all a half mile away as the football flies — at the University of Hawai'i. Twice Lee has applied for the head coaching job and been turned away. Several times he has been asked to consider assistant coaching positions. Soon, his decision tell us, both the timing and the opportunity will be right.

For at age 54, with nothing left to prove in high school, the window of opportunity beckons at UH where his brother and confidant Ron coaches. And it comes with the added attraction that, should head coach June Jones leave, Cal Lee would be well positioned as a replacement candidate.

With time on the UH staff, no longer would he be a high school coach attempting to make the direct leap to Division IA. Never mind that he has coached in college before, no longer would the so-called Gerry Faust question he fought unsuccessfully in 1995 and '98 hang over his candidacy.

There are a lot of reasons for Cal Lee to finally move on. And sitting in that office surrounded by a wall full of reminders of how far he has come and how little there is left to do undoubtedly helped drive that decision.