Former UH star will coach program in its final season
By Dennis Anderson
Advertiser Staff Writer
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Onosai, 38, an associate pastor at Word of Life Church and popular former University of Hawai'i football player, has been appointed head coach of the Pac-Five team by John Hom, Pac-Five athletic director.
Onosai was a battering ram fullback for Pac-Five's first Prep Bowl champions in 1982. One of his teammates was Saleva'a Atisanoe, who would later gain fame as sumo champion Konishiki.
Onosai was switched to more suitable offensive line positions at UH, where he earned second-team All-Western Athletic Conference honors in 1985 and '86.
He was taken by the Dallas Cowboys in the sixth round of the NFL draft in 1987 and was promoted as the Cowboys "center of the future."
But early in training camp, Onosai was temporarily paralyzed in a drill.
Calcium deposits were found on a vertebrae in his neck and doctors said that if he continued playing football he would risk permanent paralysis, so Onosai retired before his NFL career really began.
He has since satisfied his competitive urge by competing in the World's Strongest Man tour, carrying utility poles and trucks and other big things. He finished as high as second in international competitions.
And he has become a major presence at Word of Life, the popular church in Kaka'ako. He is athletic director of the World of Life's school.
He will be the second and final coach in Pac-Five history. Don Botelho coached the team, an amalgamation of students from schools too small to field their own squads, since its inception in 1974. Botelho resigned March 20 when he was appointed executive director of the Interscholastic League of Honolulu.
But the Onosai era of Pac-Five football will be a short one. The team is expected to go out of existence in 2004 when Mid-Pacific Institute, one of the founding members and site of all practices, starts its own team. Mid-Pac has invited players from other Pac-Five schools — once there were just five, but a total of 10 schools were represented last year — to join its team in 2004. The ILH allows combined teams under one school's name.
"Without facilities, it would be unlikely that Pac-Five football could continue to exist," Hom said.
Mid-Pacific will start its own intermediate team this year and Pac-Five will not field an intermediate team for the first time, Hom said.
