HONOLULU — Fifteen hours after boarding buses at their football facilities in Provo, BYU’s traveling party of 290 souls, including several children under the age of 5, touched down on Oahu Friday night.
Scheduled to leave Salt Lake City at 11 a.m., the charter flight was delayed by a mechanical issue that kept the Cougars from boarding for nearly two hours, then sat on the tarmac for almost another hour before finally leaving at 2:50 p.m.
They arrived on Oahu at 9:35 p.m. MST, having spent what assistant coach Ed Lamb estimated was more than eight hours on the plane.
“Needless to say, it’s been a very, very long day,” Lamb said as the Cougars got their room keys at the Sheraton Waikiki and then headed into the swanky hotel’s ballroom for a team meal more than four hours later than scheduled.
Defensive tackle Trajan Pili, whose son Trajan Jr. was one of those toddlers aboard the jumbo jet, said the trouble getting to this tropical paradise didn’t dampen the team’s excitement and wouldn’t affect how it would practice Saturday morning.
“We got through it,” he said. “We just played games, watched movies, made the best of it.”
Hawaii’s players checked into their team hotel, the Moana Surfrider, which is just down the street from BYU’s digs the next few days, on Thursday night.
The Cougars practiced at Kamehameha High School Saturday morning, while the Rainbow Warriors worked out not far away at Farrington High.
After practice, the Cougars were scheduled to head over to the Wet ’n’ Wild water park in Kapolei, although weather forecasts call for cloudy skies, rain and wind all weekend. They were to gather for a team photograph at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel’s Ocean Lawn Saturday night.
“We got through it. We just played games, watched movies, made the best of it.” — BYU defensive tackle Trajan Pili, on the travel delay
Pili, who is from Las Vegas, has been to Hawaii several times because he married a woman from Laie, home of the BYU-Hawaii campus. He said a lot of his teammates haven’t had the pleasure of visiting this Island paradise.
“For a lot of them, this is their first time to be by the ocean, or on a beach,” he said. “So a lot of them are excited to get in the water. Some of them are going to try to learn how to swim. So we will see how that goes.”
The Hawaii Bowl, which will be played Tuesday at 6 p.m. MST at Aloha Stadium, offers a $1.2 million payout, but BYU won’t make any money off the endeavor. The school traditionally pays for players’ wives and children to travel to bowl games, and will do so again this year. About 25 players are married, according to a school news release.
“It is really cool to play for a school that is willing to do that,” Pili said as teammates such as Austin Lee and Isaiah Kaufusi got off the bus with small children in tow.
BYU never plays or practices on Sundays, and won’t in Honolulu despite the game being just two days away — kickoff is at 6 p.m. Tuesday on a field where Hawaii has already played eight times this season.
The Cougars will attend church services Sunday morning, then visit the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor that afternoon.
Both teams will participate together in the kickoff banquet Sunday night at the Cougars’ team hotel.
After a news conference for both teams and their coaches at the Royal Hawaiian on Monday morning, selected BYU players will visit ill children at the Kapi’olani Medical Center.
BYU will practice for the final time in 2019 on Monday afternoon, conducting a walk-through at the stadium before playing on Christmas Eve for the first time in school history.
It will be BYU’s second bowl game in Hawaii; its first was on Christmas Day in 2002 against Kansas in what was called the Aloha Bowl.
Passing game coordinator Aaron Roderick said the distractions playing in Hawaii “are very real” but the Cougars should be able to handle them because they are a mature team. The average age of BYU’s roster is 21.4 years.
“There is a reason why (Hawaii) has such a great record at home,” Roderick said. “They are good, but I think it is a distraction for visitors. There is a lot going on, especially when you are there for several days. You gotta remember why you are playing.”
Especially when it took you 15 hours to get there.
Cougars on the air
SoFi Hawaii Bowl
BYU (7-5) vs. Hawaii (9-5)
At Aloha Stadium, Honolulu
Tuesday, 6 p.m. MST
TV: ESPN
Radio: 1160 AM, 102.7 FM