It was summer, and the weather was warm but the reception cool.

It was the second day in Hawai'i for Jake Patek, a 2006 University of Hawai'i football recruit, and he was stretching on the side while his future teammates were going through unsupervised drills at the team's grass practice facility.

"It was hard, at first, because nobody knew me," said Patek, a strong safety who transferred from Blinn Junior College in Texas. "It was like, 'Who's this guy? Who does he think he is?' "

Davone Bess, who was a Freshman All-America slotback last season, noticed Patek.

"He was sitting there by himself," Bess recalled. "I figured, 'Let's see who this dude is. Hopefully, he'll be playing with us on Saturdays.'

"I went up to him, and I was like, 'What's up?' He was a new Warrior. I wanted to bring him into the 'ohana. I brought him in, like he was one of mine. That's my junior."

Bess ran routes against Patek. They exchanged tips and suggestions.

"From that point on, I started to get in with the group," Patek said.

Bess was paying it forward.

"They did the same thing for me," said Bess, who joined the Warriors in January 2005. "I didn't have to help him, but I wanted to. He came all the way from Texas. He had nobody here. I made him feel wanted."

Patek is now a comfortable fit. He received permission to wear former UH linebacker David Maeva's jersey No. 31.

Patek is expected to start at strong safety for Saturday's season-opening game at Alabama.

Patek sat down to discuss his free-verse writing, the obstacles he overcame to earn a Division I football scholarship, and the pillow fight that made him a Warrior.

On his free-verse writing:

"It's not poetry or anything like that. It's not like I'm trying to rhyme or use certain meters. It's writing whatever comes to my head. A lot of it is courage-type stuff. It's something to get me hyped before a game. I have probably 20 pages on my computer that I've written. Not all of it is about courage. Some of it is about other aspects I've dealt with in life. A lot of it has to do with overcoming obstacles. I had to do a lot of that in life."

On taking a Samoan language class:

"So far, it's pretty easy with pronunciation and stuff like that. Plus, there are players on the team who are Samoan. It's pretty cool. Sometimes you might want to talk with them in Samoan."

On living in Hawai'i:

"It's pretty much what I expected it to be. Everyone on the team looks out for each other. I get a little lonely at times because my family and friends are all back home. But the teammates here do a good job of making sure they're your family, that you're looked out for. If you need anything, they'll take you to Wal-Mart, things like that.

"Mostly, I hang out with football players. I haven't really met any new people. Every now and then I'll talk with somebody in class when we have to do some kind of group activity.

"I don't think the other students know I'm a football player. I think the only way to know I actually play football is if I'm walking with someone else who plays football, or maybe I'll have a Hawai'i football shirt on. I think it's kind of good."

On the tattoo on his left forearm:

"It says, 'Jesus Christ,' in Aramaic. It was the original language that Christ spoke. It's a good conversation piece. People always ask what it means and why I got it. It's pretty cool. I went to a local place in Victoria, my hometown in Texas. I got a guy named Sam to do it. I always wanted to get more, but everyone else — mom, girlfriend, all of that — are like, 'No, don't get any more.' I was gone for a week with my friends for spring break when I got it. I stayed the night at my friend's house the night before we left, and that's when I got it. His mom saw my tattoo, and his mom and my mom were best friends. She was like, 'Oh, I really like Jacob's tattoo.' My mom was like, 'What? Tattoo?' She didn't say anything to my dad. I had to break it to my dad when I got home that I got a tattoo. He was pretty upset. Not the fact that I got the tattoo but the location of it. It's below my sleeve. It's noticeable. He thought it would affect me later on when I'm trying to get a job. He told me, 'You'd better be able to wear long sleeves in hot weather.'

"In Texas, here and there, you have people with tattoos. Mainly all of the bikers. You come here, and everybody has one. I guess it's part of the culture. They get tattoos. Sometimes it's to become a man, you have to get tattooed. There are a lot of women who have tattoos. I think it's a cool thing, that that part of the culture is being preserved with the tattoos and stuff. They have certain meanings. They have their full arms done. Their chests. Their calves. I'm satisfied with this right now."

On adapting to the Polynesian culture:

"I'm coming from somewhere totally different. In order for me to fit in, and to be a great teammate, I have to be able to go out with them and try to be a part of that culture. I think it kind of honors them, too. I'm making a point to learn something about their history, and that kind of stuff. It's been pretty exciting so far. There are a lot of cool things I learned about respect for the family, respect for your family's name. I think all of that good stuff is lacking over on the other 49 states."

On his hometown of Victoria:

"It's in the middle of everything. You've got Houston probably two hours north of Victoria. Then you've got Austin two hours away. San Antonio's two hours away. Corpus is two hours away. Dallas is six hours away. We've got about 65,000 to 70,000. It's not too small. It's still growing. It's growing economically.

"It's not known for specifically one thing. There's a lot of cattle over there. The surrounding areas of Victoria are cattle, cattle, cattle. Probably about 35 minutes away, the beer Shiner Bock was originally brewed in Shiner, Texas. That's where a lot of my family lives. That's the only thing that's really known. Other than that, nothing really.

"Growing up in Victoria, Texas, was good. I played Little League baseball and had tons of friends. It was always hot. In the summer, 95 is average, and no breeze at all. In the winter it got pretty cold, probably 40 degrees, which I think is pretty cold, but other people in the world don't think that's cold. Whatever. It was good growing up there. My grandparents lived there. I had several aunts and uncles there. I grew up with some good friends.

"High school was a totally different story. I got a car when I was 16. I went wherever I wanted. My grandma actually gave me her old car. It was an '88 blue Honda Accord. But when you're 16, hey, it got me to where I needed to go. There was A/C. No CD player. There was a cassette player. I had a little adapter for my CD player."

On failing to make the Blinn Junior College baseball team:

"I thought I had a really good tryout. It was an all-day thing. We went out there in the morning. We had throwing and hitting evaluations. Out of 100 guys, they kept 25 guys for a scrimmage. They had live pitching. It was two weeks after I graduated (from high school) when I tried out. I already visited the Blinn campus, and thought I wanted to go here. I had that tryout. I felt I did really good. I called the coach up, and he was like, 'You should try out somewhere else. You definitely have college baseball potential.' He just told me they really liked me, but they got the guy they wanted. They wanted a left-handed pitcher. I was like, 'OK, you could have told me that earlier.' I decided to try out for the football team."

On spending his first semester in Blinn's football developmental program:

"It was pretty intense. We did a lot of running, just hard workouts. They were trying to make us quit. There were about 60 guys who came out for the developmental program. This was in the fall of '03. They tried to run everybody off. They wanted to see who really wanted it. I stuck with it. There were times I thought this wasn't for me, just because it was so hard on my body. We worked out at 8 o'clock in the morning. I remember somebody had done something wrong. For punishment, we had to do wall-sits. We had to put our back up against the wall, thighs parallel with the ground, and we had to wall-sit for 10 minutes. Then we had to be in the push-up position for 15 minutes. After that, we went outside and ran a ladder, which is a 400-yard (sprint), then 300, 200, 100 and back up to 400. That was pretty gruesome. My body was killing me the next day. I made it. All of the hard work paid off."

On going from a walk-on in 2004 to a Preseason Junior College All-America outside linebacker in 2005:

"I was surprised by the nomination. I wasn't expecting it. So you get nominated for it, and now you have to live up to it. You have to ball out. I went out there and did the best I could. I didn't sell short of anything."

On the recruiting process:

"I was talking to Kansas at the beginning of summer (of 2005). It went on through probably a little after mid-season, and all of a sudden they dropped off. They stopped calling me. I was like, 'What did I do?' My (junior college) coach told me they got into trouble for something, and they had a limited number of scholarships. They could have said something.

"Near the end of the season, Texas A&M started recruiting me. I talked to a couple of other schools like Missouri and some Division II schools. Missouri said, 'We like the way you play, but we're going to go the high school route.' I understood that.

"A&M talked to me. I went up there on an unofficial visit. Coach (Dennis) Franchione said I was a 'tweener — between outside linebacker and safety. I was too small to play outside linebacker, and didn't know if I could cover well enough to play safety. ... A new (defensive) coordinator came in, saw my tape and said, 'We need this kid.' They called me up. I came in for another unofficial visit. This was the day before the spring semester started. They offered me a scholarship. They said, just do what you have to do this spring. If we think you're worth being kept on a scholarship, we'll keep you on a scholarship. An hour and a half after they offered it to me, coach Fran was at the East-West Shrine game, and the O-line coach called and said, 'Hey, you're giving this kid a scholarship after you promised it to this walk-on player.' It was an O-lineman, and the coach was trying to look out for his player. It was like, 'All right, we'll give it to that other kid.'

"I was in contact with (UH) coach (Jeff) Reinebold. He said: 'Just believe it's going to happen.' I sent a tape up here, and it got lost in the mail. I don't know how that happened. So I had to send another. From what I heard, coach June (Jones) liked it. That's how I ended up here."

On his pillow-fight initiation during training camp:

"The first Saturday night they didn't really get me. The next day was the first night we would have off. Everybody was staying up late. They were talking about it in the locker room. They were getting some people pretty bad. They were attacking them, hitting them for a while. The pillows are packed a little. I mean, it doesn't hurt, but you can feel it. I had a couple of people charge me. I heard 'Patek' — people screaming my name. They charged me, and started hitting me. I grabbed a pillow and started swinging back, and they kind of backed off. I know Reagan (Mauia, a running back), for sure, was the first to call out my name. And I remember (long-snapper) Jake Ingram. There were quite a few. Six or seven who came up on me. They fell away after they hit me six times.

"The last night of camp they went at it again. I was trying to sleep. All I heard was my name, 'Patek.' They got me for a while, but it wasn't too bad. They were pillows. They were soft. If you're a rookie, you have to go with it.

"After they finished, they said, 'Grab a pillow. Let's go.' I kind of hung back. I was so tired. It was camp. I go to bed pretty early."

On being hospitalized his first week of training camp:

"It might have been a bug. I know for sure (defensive end) Ikaika (Alama-Francis) caught it. (Outside linebacker) Tyson Kafentzis caught it the other day. I think it was a 24-hour bug. I lost a lot of fluids. I sweat a lot. That day we had to run extra because people were missing curfew. On top of that, I get this bug. I start throwing up. All of the fluids I'm trying to drink are gone. I called coach up. I said, 'Hey, I have to go to the hospital.' I know I wasn't deathly ill. It wasn't anything I could do. I just had to go with it. If I tried to drink any kind of water, it's coming right back out. The only thing I could do was get an IV."

On being promoted to starting safety ahead of injured Brad Kalilimoku:

"It's a game of football. You have good days, and you have bad days. Some days someone might get hurt. The next day the second-string person who became the first string gets hurt, and now the third-string person is starting. I can't ease up. The moment I ease up, thinking I've got the spot, that's when someone else who's working harder than me makes a couple of great plays, coaches notice that, and he gets moved up.

On his name:

(Defensive coordinator Jerry Glanville) calls me all kinds of stuff. He'll ask, 'What's your first name?' I'll say, 'Jacob,' and he'll say, 'Oh, no, we've got to change that. We can't have that.' He'll call me '31' or he'll call me 'Pak.' I'm not sure why he calls me 'Pak.' It sounds like he lost a few letters.

"Usually everybody calls me 'Jake.' Ikaika calls me 'Pater' instead of 'Patek.' I don't know why he does that. He's Ikaika. Back home, I'm always 'Jacob' or 'Patek.' I'm growing accustomed to 'Jake.' I'd rather people call me 'Jake.' When my father gets into a weird mood, he'll call me 'Hey, brother.' I'm like, 'I'm your son.' " It's funny.

Reach Stephen Tsai at stsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.