A look back at a Kaua‘i great

The legendary Edmund Vasconcellos called him “the best quarterback I’ve coached.”

The Garden Island columnist Matsuo “Sidelines” Kuraoka consistently wrote that, as a bona fide triple-threat, he was the finest football back in the Territory.

“He runs, passes and punts equally well,” he wrote.

Old timers consider him the greatest all-around athlete ever to play for Kaua‘i High School, and some claim in the KIF.

The name is Richard Hadama and I was there to see him beginning in grade school and later reported some of Dick’s 1946-49 exploits at Kaua‘i High for the school paper, Ka Welo O Ka La.

Today, regretfully, Mr. Hadama of Kaneohe, O‘ahu is under care with Alzheimer’s. And it took a statewide news item in 2005 to remind fans of his athletic fame of yesteryear after he was found, having been missing, wandering overnight in the Ho’omaluhia Botanical Gardens in Kaneohe.

Richard was born in 1931, fourth among two boys and three girls. Father Tokuichi, as a patriotic second generation Nisei, volunteered for the Army in WWI and served on O‘ahu. He was a public works employee for Kaua‘i County who also tended the family’s four acres of pineapple in ‘Oma‘o. He died at age 41, interred in the Hanapepe veterans cemetery.

Richard’s mother, Kinu, was a picture bride and passed away at age 88.

Meanwhile, from Koloa School playground days, you knew this Hadama lad was a natural, always chosen early in pickup games of any sport.

One apocryphal story dates to when Dick was in what today would be middle school.

“I was catcher on a team of older kids who challenged Akio Kubota’s adults to a baseball game in Koloa where coach also lived,” relates older brother Walter Hadama. “When Coach Kubota saw Richard throw the ball from deep center field to the plate, somebody said to him that ‘this kid could someday play for your team.’”

Kubota, a Kaua‘i baseball coaching icon, replied: “He can play for me right now,” and put the youth on his squad.

When Richard showed up for drills his freshman year, 1945, “Ticky” Vasconcellos took one look at the 118 pounder standing 5-foot-8 and told him to put on weight if he wanted to play for the champion Red Raiders.  Remembers Walter: “Richard ate like mad, began exercising and got up to 128.”

By Hadama’s sophomore year, Vasco had seen enough to substitute Richard into his varsity backfield. As a junior, he played regularly and the senior starred in three of the only four varsity competitions that the three KIF schools held in those years — football, baseball and track, while also a reserve in basketball.

The many other standouts on those teams (Sasaki, Texeira, Westlake, Kai, Makanani, Chow) only made Hadama’s record more notable as he suited for four of five gridiron crowns racked up by Vasco (1944-48) before the Kaua‘i head coach and athletic director was recruited to Kaimuki High School, then Roosevelt High School, where he won several more championships.

Individual stats from those years are non-existent, even though Hadama earned eight varsity and two JV letters. News clips highlight the 1948 pigskin season (7-1) that established Hadama’s prep legacy. Opening the season in Honolulu Stadium, he completed 12 of 14 passes to scalp Roosevelt, 32-14. A Star-Bulletin sportswriter wrote: “Hadama runs his team like a professional quarterback.”

Against Kapa‘a, Hadama’s 70-yard scoring pass, among 10 completions in the first meeting (28-0), was followed by a 95-yard punt return that beat the Clippers (23-13) in the second contest. The first night Interscholastic game ever on Kaua‘i saw an Isenberg Field crowd of 3,000 witness Kaua‘i’s 39-0 rout of a McKinley team that had never before lost on this neighbor island. Dick added an 85-yard punt return touchdown (behind Stan Kaluahine’s block) to his 11 completions for 258 yards.

Against perennial arch-rival Waimea, Hadama’s flat pass score to Billy Texeria won a 6-0 cliffhanger and Richard “masterminded”, as reported by the press, a 14-0 title clincher over the Menehune in the Turkey Day game.

Billed as a duel between the state’s two best QBs, Farrington’s Ken Kahoonei got the win (19-6) in the Shrine Game as passing was about equal and Hadama excelled in punting and running despite the setback. Three lost fumbles (none by Dick) did the Raiders in.

Coaches and officials voted Hadama a unanimous all-KIF back and the league’s MVP as a prelude for arguably the most memorable game in Kaua‘i prep history, at least until the recent 2006 playoff for a first state championship.

On Dec. 19, 1948, tiny Kaua‘i High met the Western States High School All-Stars in old Honolulu Stadium before 4,000 screaming spectators.

Vasconcellos was allowed to include seven alumni among his 30-player squad. The Raiders were outweighed by 37 pounds a man in the line, where size ultimately made the difference, barely.

Guard Hisa Oyama, formerly from Lawai and late of Kailua, remembered in 2002: “With that amount of weight and height coming at you, that we were able to be close was something.”

A 72-yard drive “brilliantly field generaled by Hadama who contributed runs of 13 and 27 yards” saw Kaua‘i’s Mitsuru (Lipto) Sasaki score from one yard out, four minutes into the second quarter. Hadama’s tackle saved a subsequent touchdown but the visitors ultimately scored.

Then Richard ran the kickoff back 51 yards and passed to Larry Carvalho for an apparent TD, only to have it nullified by offsides which might well have been a game-decider. Halftime 6-6.

Finally, the visitors tallied with three minutes left to go ahead 13-6. With fourth and 25 from the All-Stars’ 49, Hadama’s long TD pass to 135-pound alumnus Mamo Kaneshiro of Omao with just five seconds remaining came close to tying up the game, until the PAT went wide.

Ticky’s tribute of “My boys more than upheld the name of Kaua‘i High” was right on. Richard shared game honors with Sasaki and Kaneshiro and a stout line that made two goal line stands on the half-yard marker.

“Hadama is to Vasco what Johnny Lujack is to Notre Dame’s Frank Leahy,” wrote Kuraoka. “We proved we could compete with anybody,” said Oyama.

Hadama added: “We had quick backs, so instead of pushing through the large guys on the line, we swept the ends and made quick tosses.”

It remained years later for Kaneshiro to explain why he felt he missed both extra points: all players that day had to wear shoes with cleats. The star of the Koloa Plutes plantation league kicked everything barefooted.

“The shoes didn’t feel right for me,” he said wryly.

Baseball teammates Robert Tamura of Lihu‘e and Miwao Kokame of Lawai likened Hadama to Joe DiMaggio playing with Army all-stars in Hawai‘i while in WWII uniform — a picture of gracefulness in the field, great skills and handsome modesty.

Richard batted .615 his senior year and over .400 as a junior. His career peak came in the semifinals of the Territorial American Legion Junior baseball tourney.

In Kaua‘i versus the Big Island, he drove in eight runs in a come-from-behind 12-9 victory with a grand slam, a second homer and two singles.

His reward? Two five-dollar dinners donated by Waikiki Smile Cafe.

None of these accomplishments revealed the Hadama x-factor: blinding foot speed. When not on the diamond, he stripped down for track.

In the annual Rotary Track and Field meet on Faye Field in Kekaha his senior year, he took four firsts (50, 100, 220, 440 relay) and set a new meet record of 9.9 seconds in the 100-yard dash, the best time throughout the islands in the spring of 1949. At the prestigious Punahou Relays he won the 100-yard dash in 10.1 seconds.

Until then no Kaua‘i student had ever been awarded a four-year all-expense athletic scholarship to a mainland college. Vasconcellos’ dream of sending one of his men to his own alma mater came true when Hadama was so notified in April of his grant to San Jose State.

Said Richard: “All I can say is that I am grateful for all that Coach Vasconcellos had done for me. I will try my best to make a go of my scholarship.”

So how did it go? As I wrote in a by-lined article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin after Dick’s 1949 football season, he performed okay on the freshman team. Several TDs and decent playing time for what today would be an NCAA Div. I team.

Then along came the Korean War and Richard was shipped to Europe with the U.S. Army, stationed in Italy. Like many, he played ball in the Service and fate again intervened. An Achilles tear was misdiagnosed as a sprain. The ankle worsened with play and forever hampered his athletic mobility, as his new nickname “Hoppy” hinted.

But there was still an education to complete upon discharge and the University of Hawai‘i’s Hank Vasconcellos (brother of Edmund) prized Hadama’s maturity and still-evident gifts.

Over three seasons (1954-56), he started many games at quarterback and was used at halfback. Between playing O‘ahu-based military all-star elevens and mainland Div. I opponents, the Warriors posted a combined 18-11 record in those three seasons. Clippings reveal Dick as primarily a slick ball handler and accurate passer, as his two TDs in a 33-6 stomping of Humboldt (CA) State in 1956 proved.

Two years earlier he was praised in a thrilling 28-27 comeback over a “rough, tough and huge” local Navy outfit for the play of the game. Hadama perfectly executed a belly fake, then pitched out for the clinching TD run. Before 10,000 at Fresno State, Richard, at halfback, completed a crucial pass in the 25-20 upset victory.

The three most-remembered outings of those up-and-down years for UH were with Nebraska and Iowa. In 1954, the Huskers crushed a Rainbow squad, 50-0, that had felt it was ready, with Richard the QB starter.

Interestingly, the ‘Bows were officiated out of a consolation score when Dick’s deflected-and-caught pass into the end zone, ruled incomplete, actually never touched the ground.

Just months later, UH opened the 1955 campaign by shocking 23,000 in Lincoln, Neb. with a 6-0 revenge upset. The only score was a ground-attack drive in the fourth quarter. Richard’s family and UH fans listened to the thrilling tape replay the next day over KGU.

By the end of 1956, our Koloa senior was now a backup before probably the largest crowd he’d ever played in front of, 40,000 in the 34-0 loss to Iowa.  The “scrappy Hawaiians traveled 4,500 miles to pass out a thousand leis to the Iowa Stadium crowd,” wrote the United Press reporter.

Following graduation, Richard and his wife, the former Janet Morikawa of Lahaina, raised a son and a daughter while enjoying three grandkids. Hadama’s career in Hawai‘i’s DOE began as a teacher at Waimea (Kaua‘i) High, then Kaimuki, before moving into administration with several principal positions on O‘ahu. He ultimately retired out of Castle High in 1986.

He was known for calmness under pressure and a friendly demeanor with colleagues. Dick was active in Little League baseball and, in retirement, turned to golf.

The 20th century saw Kaua‘i produce hundreds of gifted student-athletes, but only one Richard Hadama.

Ray Smith is a 1946 graduate of Koloa School and a 1950 alumnus of Kaua‘i High. The career journalist and publisher now lives in Wheaton, Ill. and returns to Kaua‘i regularly. His late mother, Gertrude, taught kindergarten at Lihu‘e School for 20 years and his late father, Howard, was pastor of Koloa Union Church.