CHAPEL HILL, Texas — In East Texas, kids play on black turf pebbles not sandy beaches, and stadium lights sprout from the ground, not palm trees, its about as far opposite from Hawaii as you can get, yet there's a championship football team is embracing the aloha culture.
“Ohana means family," Chapel Hill head coach Jeff Riordan said. “It's been part of my program since probably 2012, family is important, and especially in this game of football and as much time as we spend together. So ohana is just one of our words.”
The slogan's origin is one that many share a connection to.
“It's just something that we took from that Lilo and Stitch movie," Riordan said. “So I guess you could say I was a fan.”
Riordan's kids had no idea their fondness for the cartoon blue alien has brought an entire football team together.
“It means family, brotherhood,” running back Rickey Stewart said. “Basically, like the whole team, like, we all got each other back.”
But someone is trying to break this brotherhood up, an East Texas team they’ve played already this year, Kilgore.
“It's going to take our best shot. It's going to take our best game of the year," Riordan said. "We know what we got going into playing Kilgore. They're one of the best teams in for a football defensively, they may be the best for a football team.”
But these Bulldogs haven’t come all this way for nothing,
“We will do what we got to do to keep the family together one week at a time," Riordan said. "You know, here we are in the fourth round the playoffs, and that's been our motivation. Is, these guys love each other. The coaches staff loves each other. The coaches love the players. The players love the coaches, and it's one big family. We'll do whatever we got to do to try to keep it together.”
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