Kordell Johnson, a 15-year-old shíshálh soccer player, got to experience excitement both on and off the field during a trip to Hawaii last month to play with the North American Indigenous Football Association’s (NIFA) U16 Team Canada.
The Waipio International Premier Cup was played Aug. 11 to 21, and the Canadians posted a loss, a win and a draw, and missed the playoff.
Johnson had a goal and an assist as a midfielder for the Canadian squad, and he told Coast Reporter after he got back to Sechelt that the he thought the 1-1-1 record was still a good performance for the team, which included a lot of players who’d never taken the field together before.
“We had a lot of practices before the games,” he said. “And we played good together.”
Johnson said the heat and humidity were a challenge and the Canadians had to adjust their style of play a little. “It was a lot harder to breathe out there with the humidity as it is here, but I feel like I played the same,” he said.
Johnson’s father Willard said the tournament was a great experience. “It was a learning experience for Kordell and the boys. There were players from all across Canada: Quebec, the Prairies, northern B.C. and some from Alberta.”
His mom Marla said the soccer complex where the tournament was played was spectacular, and the tournament organizers did a great job organizing special dinners and other events for the teams and their families. “I loved watching Kordell play with all the new friends he made,” she said.
There was a bit of drizzle during the tournament, but the weather was good right through the event, which ended just as Hurricane Lane hit the Hawaiian Islands.
Willard and Marla, Kordell and his sister, as well some other family members planned to spend the following week enjoying a holiday at a condo near Waikiki Beach on Oahu, but instead spent most of it riding out one of the biggest storms to hit the area in years.
Lane was generating winds of more than 110 km/h, and between Aug. 22 and 26 the storm dropped more than 1,300 millimetres of rain.
Willard said there were already hints people were expecting the storm to live up to the most serious predictions, when a couple of the Hawaiian teams decided to pull out of the tournament.
Kordell said some of the other Hawaiian players, though, weren’t that concerned. “Some of the players from the other teams said [hurricanes] never usually hit [Oahu].”
The storm ended up hitting Oahu head-on.
“Everything shut right down. We went out to try to buy some food and water, but the shelves were empty,” said Willard.
The Johnsons all said they had moments where they were scared because none of them had experienced a storm that bad before, and because they were in a private condo instead of a hotel, there wasn’t any staff telling them what to do.
“It was pretty scary because on the news they were showing storms from before and telling us to prepare to be without power for two weeks and everything would be shut down,” Marla said.
Willard said they got in touch with a friend for advice.
“We had a friend on Facebook, she’s from Sechelt but she’s living down in the Dominican Republic and she’s been through a few hurricanes,” he said. “She was telling us what to do – to fill up the tub, buy a lot of water and get ready to sit there for four days.”
They were also getting lots of calls and texts from family back in Canada wanting to make sure they were OK.
Marla said there was one night when the storm let up a little and they were able to get out to the beach.
“There was one shrimp truck that was open. It was about two blocks down [from the condo] and there was wind and rain and the lineup was so huge, I think we sat there for about two hours waiting for our food,” she said.
According to Willard, the rest of the time they had to just hunker down in the condo. “We had power, so we spent a lot of time watching the news.”
Unlike a lot of vacationing Canadians caught up in the storm, the Johnsons were able to leave Hawaii as scheduled, because Lane had passed by the time their flight home was due to leave on Aug. 28.
