VILLA PARK, Calif.—Cliff jumping, snorkeling, and remote living aren’t typically prerequisites for playing high school football, but they were for Villa Park on its season-opening trip to Hawaii.
The Spartans will face Orange in their Aug. 24 home opener at El Modena High carrying a 1–0 record after having spent nearly a week on Oahu earlier this month. Villa Park returned to California with a 37–13 victory over Damien of Honolulu on Aug. 11 and so much more in terms of experiences and memories.
“I feel like the trip overall was really good for us,” senior wide receiver Spencer Jarrell told The Epoch Times. “One of the nights, we had everyone come up and say something to the team. We would just give a speech, talk about bonding, talk about our experience in Hawaii. That probably brought us together the most because we had people give like five-minute-long speeches about how much this team means to them.”
Opening the season in Hawaii was the brainchild of Coach Dusan Ancich, who pulled off the dream road trip for a second time in his 15 seasons leading the Spartans. He and nine assistant coaches led a contingent of 78 players—no parents, no fans, no cheerleaders, no band, only “the guys.”
Unlike Edison-Huntington Beach, which had its scheduled two-game trip to Maui canceled because of wildfires that ravaged that island, Villa Park was fortunate to be on Oahu, where there was no impact from the fires.
The Spartans stayed—as many as 16 players and one coach in a room—at Camp Erdman, a YMCA-run outpost outside Honolulu that is well-known among Hawaiian students. Other than a few workers, food preparers, and so forth, there was no one else.
