KAHULUI, Hawaii — The power was out, so Morgan Montgomery and his family busted out the cards in the living room of their Lahaina apartment.
At some point, as the group played on that blustery Tuesday, Montgomery, a senior offensive lineman on the Lahainaluna High football team, looked outside and saw smoke. Smoke became visible fire, and Montgomery soon watched as nearby houses of friends and family members ignited.
As he frantically tried to get in touch with people in the area, his family hurriedly tossed what they could — clothes, mostly — into bags and left as the building’s fire alarm trilled. Fortunately, they were able to get out of town.
“We honestly didn’t think that our apartment building was going to go down. It did, but everybody that I was able to get ahold of was OK,” Montgomery recalled to Spectrum News this week. “That’s all I cared about at that moment, just making sure everybody was safe.”
It has been one month since hurricane-force winds whipped a wildfire into a force destructive enough to nearly wipe the historic town off the map.
The community continues to sift through the ashes, with the death toll frozen at 115 for weeks, and MPD and the FBI released a list 66 people who remain unaccounted for.
The Lahainaluna football team has long been the pride of the town, with a loyal following and several state championships in the recent past. The Lunas, like everyone else, were hit hard by the disaster.
Co-head coach Dean Rickard estimated that more than 70% of his players were directly affected with the loss of a home or loved one, and the same was true for 12 or 13 of the Lunas’ 19 coaches, he said.
That’s what made Wednesday’s scene just one more remarkable occurrence in a series of them. More than 50 members of the Lahainaluna varsity and junior varsity teams gathered at HI Performance Athletics, a gym in Kahului, for a voluntary team workout. An assistant coach yelled out instructions for various exercises amid the din of clanging weights.
“Interestingly enough, it was the kids … that actually came to us as a coaching staff and wanted to get back into the rhythm I guess, so to speak,” Rickard said. “To have the socialization, to have the team camaraderie, and just to forget about the tragedy that everyone went through. It’s an emotional roller-coaster and everyone has a story in there.” He nodded into the gym from the parking lot. “But at the same time, they realize that we gotta move forward.”
The rest of the Maui Interscholastic League has; its master schedule was overhauled late last month and football and volleyball games have been played for the last two weeks.
Lahainaluna’s abbreviated, five-game MIL schedule begins Sept. 30 against Baldwin at War Memorial Stadium in Wailuku.
Lunas players have worked out together for the last three weeks on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Lunas assistant Vernon Patao has an investment in HI Performance Athletics, so the team has been able to use the facility for free, for which Rickard and players expressed appreciation.
“I liked it so we could get our minds of stuff, all the things that are happening in Lahaina,” said senior offensive lineman Tovia Galoia, whose family's yard and fence were singed by flames but house was spared. “It made everything easier.”
Galoia and his family left Lahaina early, in two large trucks, once they saw smoke. But they doubled back when they spotted the scale of the inferno and were able to pick up stragglers fleeing on the road.
For the moment, he is staying in a hotel.
Lahainaluna got a huge boost this week with the announcement of $325,000 in sports funding, plus equipment for specific sports like football, basketball and baseball, through the Downtown Athletic Club of Hawaii’s ongoing “Luna Strong” campaign.
The Lunas, who will operate as a “school within a school” at the new Kulanihako‘i High in Kihei starting on Thursday, will have about two weeks of practice to get ready for its new opener.
The team will have to get creative with its numbers with a chunk of the team still scattered and enrolled at other schools with no guarantee they can or will return. The JV and varsity will be merged this season, Rickard said. There are seven senior starters returning, and 14 seniors back overall.
More than 60 Lunas practiced together on Thursday for the first time since Aug. 7, the day before the fires. At that time, there were more than 80 players between the varsity and JV.
“It’s all about the health, well-being and safety of the players to make sure they can get the practice time in and get ready for that first game, physically and mentally,” Rickard said.
One of the biggest problems at the moment is logistics — figuring out what equipment to transport to Kihei and what to leave at the hillside Lahainaluna campus that they may return to later this season. Oct. 7 is tentatively listed as a home game at Sue Cooley Stadium.
But the Sept. 30 game, even on the other side of the island from Lahaina, will not lack for powerful symbolism. The Valley Isle as a whole is talking about what it will mean when the Lunas, displaced but united, take the field in full uniform for the first time since the generational disaster.
“I feel we’ll come back stronger from what happened,” Galoia said. “I feel we’re all mentally prepared for this. We know what’s going to go down. We’re going to fight hard.”
Montgomery said he still worries about his teammates but realizes there is something larger at play.
“Football’s a huge part of our community. Our guys, we’re going to try to show that this game, just to bring up the spirits of the Lahaina community, give them something to look forward to," Montgomery said.
"We’re going to be coming out swinging.”
Rickard said that based on conversations and what he’s seen on social media, he already knows that day will run the gamut of emotions for the community and the team itself.
“I fully expect the entire West Side community will be there in those stands on the day of Sept. 30,” he said. "It’s going to be an event, and I think a heartwarming event, an emotional event, a tearful event."
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.