Kaua‘i hosts Roosevelt in opening round

The first round of the First Hawaiian Bank/HHSAA State Football Championships starts tonight with two games: No. 3 Kaua‘i High School versus Roosevelt High School at Vidinha Stadium and No. 4 Kaimuki High School versus Kamehameha Schools Hawai‘i at Kaiser High School. Both games will start at 7 p.m.

There will be an all out media blitz for the Kaua‘i/Roosevelt game at Vidinha Stadium. OC 16 will televise the game live, KQNG’s AM 570 will broadcast the game and scoring updates will be posted on The Garden Island newspaper Web site.

This is Kaua‘i’s fifth straight year in the state championship tournament. The Red Raiders (7-1, 5-1 Kaua‘i Interscholastic Federation) were semifinalists in 2004 and last year, they were one of the first Neighbor Island schools to reach a state championship final.

In an interview earlier this week, Kaua‘i head coach and KIF coach of the Year Derek Borrero said the team was not intimidated by the O‘ahu team.

“Everybody keeps asking us if we can compete with Roosevelt. They’ve got an extremely tough running back and the quarterback rolls out and throws and, you know, we feel we can compete with Roosevelt,” Borrero told TGI. “There’s this old school mentality that we’re just another Neighbor Island school, we’re just the Garden Island. And that’s what we’re real excited about. This is always a big show for us.”

The last set of O‘ahu teams to play at Vidinha have all lost to Kaua‘i.

Kaua‘i should KIF player of the year Andrew Renaud and KIF all-star receivers Blake Gingerich, Tyrus Ceria-Lux and Jonathan Gebauer at its disposal.

The winner of tonight’s Kaua‘i/Roosevelt game will advance to the quarterfinals and play No. 2 ‘Iolani School at 2 p.m. next Saturday at ‘Iolani.

A complete list of KIF all-stars will be posted in Sunday’s edition of the TGI’s Sports section.