By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Darnell Arceneaux was a wide-eyed, green-as-a-gourd redshirt freshman when he became the surprise choice as the University of Utah's starting quarterback late in the 1997 season.

"I remember that people asked me if I knew what I was doing because we had a junior with a lot more experience who had been the starter," recalled Ron McBride, the Utes' coach at the time.

Arceneaux passed for two touchdowns and ran for another in a 31-14 win over Rice that began a string of victories. It was precisely the type of performance that, when it was repeated in rivalry games against Brigham Young and in the postseason, came to illustrate what people who had followed his high school exploits in Hawai'i already knew: "He's at his best when the situation is the toughest," McBride said.

Good thing because Arceneaux, not for the first time, has his work cut out for him.

In returning to his alma mater, this time as Saint Louis School's head football coach, Arceneaux is once again the surprise pick and something of a rookie under scrutiny.

Only now it will be calling all the signals, not just some of the plays the way he did in three O'ahu Prep Bowl championships. At 25 and without any previous coaching experience, Arceneaux was the eye-opening choice to succeed Delbert Tengan and, by extension, the legendary Cal Lee.

Where he was once the air apparent to the quarterback position at Saint Louis, now Arceneaux is the successor to the whole trophy case — and a lot more.

In his selection, it is also easy to see him as one of the agents of change at a school that, in some people's minds at least, had come to be narrowly defined by its decades-old domination of high school football here.

Along with the administration's choice of Todd Los Ba–os, the former state championship wrestling coach who succeeds Lee as athletic director, it would seem there is a philosophical shift afoot along with the change of name plates at the school.

It suggests that Father Allen De Long, the school president of almost three years, has used these key openings to make a statement and effect a more well-rounded program without the turmoil a revolution often brings.

Indeed, the hiring of Arceneaux gives the Crusaders both a foot into the rich football tradition that produced 16 championships (Prep Bowl and state) and a fresh-faced sense of change that allows it to step into a new era. At once Arceneaux provides his players with a role model not that many years removed from themselves and the winds of change.

Barely seven years after his graduation, the Crusaders have once again called Arceneaux's number and asked him to again make the big play.