Meet Hawai’i’s Luke Felix-Fualalo, the most intriguing guy in college

• Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior WriterAug 23, 2024, 08:00 AM ET Close Senior writer for ESPN The Publication and ESPN.com 2-time Sports Emmy winner

• 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year

“You need to understand that there is more than one course to the top of the mountain.”– Miyamoto Musashi

For Luke Felix-Fualalo, the right take on of the Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors, those words have become a metaphor for his whole life. What might effectively be the most intriguing life to be found in all of college football.He is an international citizen. He is philosophical, investing his time in between football and graduate research studies dissecting the works of the Japanese masters, particularly those of Miyamoto Musashi, perhaps the greatest swordsman to ever deal with a blade, and he always managed two. The lineman who was named for Luke Skywalker has veins that course not with the Force, but rather an athletically charged DNA that feels as if it were plucked from some mystical branch that grows on that very mountaintop.And woe be to the poor soul who tries to take one course– the blind side path– with a bead on

sacking Warriors quarterback Brayden Schager. Since No. 72 is a mountain himself. The bedrock upon which the Hawai’i football program wants to stand on for one more season as it continues to climb toward regaining its previous heights.For young Luke– complete name Luke Sione Felix-Fualalo( noticable foo-a-lah-lo )– the Australian-raised kid of a previous Tongan nationwide rugby player

(aka, football with no pads and couple of rules)and a New Zealand national netball professional athlete( believe basketball with no backboards and odd guidelines ), and the cousin of New Zealand’s Strongest Guy, maturing on the west main coast of Australia, courses to mountaintops were not metaphors. They were extremely genuine and really typical, as he and his 2 older brothers scrambled their method up rain forest hillsides, slipping over water-slicked rocks and vegetation to eventually stand atop bushland waterfalls … and jump.” You go up there and you inch out to the edge,” Felix-Fualalo described Tuesday, having just finished the second practice of the first game week of the season, a Week 0 see to the islands from Delaware State.”When you get to the edge of the cliff, you simply have to not consider it. Leap out. Know where the rocks are. Let it rip. “So, how high of a mountain are we talking about?”Not too high. You get too high and the water starts to hurt. “Dude, you’re 6-7 and weigh 310 pounds.”

If anything,” Hawai’i head coach Timmy Chang stated, chuckling

,”it’s the water that’s going to be harming. Simply ask some of the defensive linemen who have attempted to dive into Luke.

“” With water as the basis, the spirit ends up being like water. Water adopts the shape of its receptacle. It is in some cases a drip and sometimes a wild sea. “– Musashi Denise Felix had her kids in the water at an early age. Nathaniel, Ezra and Luke, equally expanded in age, were swimming almost as soon as they could stroll. Denise was a swimmer too, standing 6-foot-1, with broad shoulders, both actually and figuratively. She and Daniel Fualalo met in New Zealand, the club rugby player and the netballer. However by the time the kids were growing up, it was practically just Denise and the boys.The oldest, Nathaniel, was the runt of the litter. He’s 6-5.”Yeah, mealtime might get a little extreme,”Luke said with a chuckle, speaking of Sunday roasts of pork and lamb.” Mother was a nurse and was chosen a lot of different shifts, so she would leave Crockery Pots full, cooking throughout the day. When the cover came off, none of it lasted long.” So, fights?” Not when we got older. When everyone is 6-foot-something you can’t battle or everything ends up broken.”The young boys ‘maternal grandparents helped raise them. Both came to New Zealand in the 1960s, when tens of countless Polynesians arrived from seemingly every point in the Pacific. They worked hard, played rugby hard and followed generations that were and are packed with large, extremely strong humans. As in, the greatest humans on the planet. Back home, Luke’s more youthful paternal half-brother, Ethan, is simply striking his teenager years and the household is bracing itself for puberty.”He’s going to be a tree,”Luke said.”A huge tree. “However to be the biggest tree in the household forest, it’s going to need to be a helluva growth spurt.”Have you seen my cousin, Colm Woulfe-Felix?”Luke said of the three-time winner of the title New Zealand’s Strongest Male and a rival on the planet

‘s Strongest Guy occasion, who checks in at a scant 6-5, 397 pounds and has actually pulled trucks, tossed iron barrels and deadlifted 900 pounds. “In some cases he ‘d come by for dinner at my grandparents’house. Grandma would offer him three entire peaches and he ‘d simply get them in those huge hands and just munch them all down at one time.”Luke played rugby at age 5, although the age requirement was 6. He was just too big to inform no. He played soccer too. He was so much bigger than his colleagues that he played goalie, if for no other factor than he filled the frame of the objective.”As a child he was a cheeky boy with the

cheekiest smile and I would just get to see him regularly over the years, as we matured in different nations,”Woulfe-Felix, aka the Wolfman, stated.”I remember seeing him in his teenager years and noting how thoughtful and insightful he was when we were playing computer game

. He had a much deeper understanding of the mechanics behind the game and he destroyed me, in spite of me being the confident adult and him a young teenager.” Then one of the last times we caught up, he had turned into a giant. He’s a badass mix of brains and brawn, making him a fear on the field.”Now, yes. But in the start, the giant’s only knowledge of American football came from what he saw on television or even movies, particularly”The Blind Side.”He didn’t placed on a helmet until he was 17 and admits the shift was harder than he expected. “In rugby, you simply placed on a jersey and then run around and hit somebody. As long as you know the base rules, there’s no actually underlying technique, “he said.” However with football, you actually require to understand the positions, the guidelines, the specific technique for your game, how the game works. When I initially began football, I didn’t even know the distinction in between offense and defense. “He picked it up quickly enough that it led to a relocate to California, where he played one year at L.A.’s Cathedral High School and invested his senior year at prep powerhouse Mater Dei in Santa Ana, where he became a three-star nationwide hire and landed a scholarship to Utah.”There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining

, in his consistency and discord. … All things involve rising and falling timing. You should be able to recognize this.”– Musashi In 2019, Felix-Fualalo saw action in one game as a Ute before he was redshirted. In 2020, in the middle of the unavoidable psychological stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the following season, he saw some action on unique groups. That was it. Meanwhile, Utah was rocked by two player deaths in nine months, previous high school teammates Ty Jordan and Aaron Lowe, both lost to shootings.Editor’s Picks 2 Related” I wasn’t

in the brightest of locations. I remained in a dark location,” Felix-Fualalo said, matching his social networks feeds at the time, which weaved the enjoyment of Utah’s Pac-12 title and first-ever Rose Bowl appearance in January 2022 with reality-check posts about the significance of preserving one’s mental health.As soon as the season was done, so was he, leaving Salt Lake

City without football

and without a strategy. Then the call came from Hawai’i. It was Timmy Chang, the living Hawai’i football folk hero who as quarterback led the team to a few of its biggest minutes throughout an NCAA record-smashing five-year tenure at the start of this century. Chang was being called home to save a program that was skidding, coming off a set of losing seasons and required to desert Aloha Arena because the once-legendary venue had actually fallen into such disrepair. “What you sell here is culture, one like no place else, not just in college football, however worldwide, “Chang, 42, stated as he got ready for his 3rd season opener at the helm of his university.”You can discover a household, you can discover football, and you can do it in paradise. And this location doesn’t care if you feel lost. This island, it repairs individuals.”Felix-Fualalo required repairing. “Today is triumph over yourself of the other day. Tomorrow is your success over lower males.

“– Musashi In the beginning, those first spring practice steps in Hawai’i, the huge male had a hard time. He questioned whatever, from the placement of his feet to using his arms. He discovered his mind too quickly slipping back to the battles of Utah, and even his youth. “However if you were truly seeing him carefully, and we all were, then you could

see those little advances,”Chang said of a 2022 season that began with a demoralizing 0-3 start of lopsided losses and ended with a record of

3-10.” Then, in 2023, when we could all see this program turning a corner, when we reached 5 wins and won three of our last 5, a huge part of that was that Luke was playing like we all understood he could. ” Luke Felix-Fualalo’s success on the field in 2023 coincided with a turn-around for the Rainbow Warriors. University of Hawai’i He started 11 of 13 games and in 491 pass blocking plays, he allowed just one sack. That’s why Chang is aiming to Felix-Fualalo to anchor a bowl-or-bust season that could bring Hawai’i football back to prominence. It’s why his name has actually appeared on numerousAll-Mountain West preseason team listings and watch lists, and why NFL scouts will be reserving journeys to Honolulu this fall.”And you know what we’ll

tell them about?” Chang, who spent two seasons in the NFL, said.”Football, yes, of course. But we will also make certain they know Luke, as you called him, the most fascinating guy in football.” The Luke who is so respectful and thoughtful that he is frequently asked by Chang’s staff to lead the tours when Hawai’i recruits and their households check out campus. The Luke who steps out of his calm, almost still voice– not to

mention his comfort zone– to stand in front of his colleagues to share his life story with the hope of bonding the space under one rainbow and maybe assist them find a little of the peace that he has actually tapped from the island. The Luke who sharpens that peace daily, spending more and more time increasingly immersed in Japanese culture, from manga comics and music to his repetitive studies of Musashi’s most long-lasting works, “The 5 Rings “and” Dokkōdō,”or” The Course to Aloneness.””There is absolutely nothing beyond yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker or smarter. Whatever is within. Everything exists. Seek absolutely nothing outside of yourself. “– Musashi It must be not a surprise that, like his mom, Felix-Fualalo loves”Star Wars.”Due to the fact that it needs to also be not a surprise that when George Lucas developed his galaxy of Jedi and the Force, he did so having actually been influenced by the mentors of the samurai. When Miyamoto Musashi composed of “The Method” some 400 years ago, he became the primary maker of the state of mind that has been utilized throughout the centuries since, whether it be by generals of armies, CEO of corporations

, destroyers of Death Stars or Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors seeking to protect their quarterback from any prospective trench runners.”I asked my mama,’Why did you call me Luke?'” he recalled.” She told me that initially, she was opting for Bible names. My 2 older bros are Nathaniel and Ezra, OK? She saw Luke in the Bible, however she knew, well, that’s also Luke Skywalker. So that goes hand in hand too. And the rest is type of history. The start of my story. “The story of the most interesting man in college football.