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Opportunities often don’t arrive with advanced notice.
Timmy Chang should know.
Well before his name was elevated among the most recognizable in Hawaii football lore, Chang was a slender high school sophomore taking back-up reps on Saint Louis School’s practice field tucked behind McCabe Gym and Gerber Fieldhouse.
His relatively anonymous status effectively ended on the night of Nov. 8, 1997.
To that point, Chang served as understudy to Jason Gesser, a two-year starter and All-State quarterback who had led the Crusaders to 23 consecutive wins and would go on to a decorated career at Washington State.
But an elbow injury effectively ended Gesser’s senior season late in the second round of the ILH season and Saint Louis’ run of league and Prep Bowl titles suddenly rested on Chang’s shoulder pads.
“Even though he didn’t play much he would be sitting in on the meetings,” recalled longtime Saint Louis offensive coordinator and current head coach Ron Lee. “He was always ready to go in case Jason got hurt.”
Chang closed out a win over Punahou, but Kamehameha stunned the Crusaders 34-15 in his first start a week later to force a winner-take-all rematch.
“I thought I made an error on offense,” Lee said. “We didn’t change much to help him. We just went on as if Jason was playing and that put too much pressure on Timmy.”
With a modified gameplan, the Crusaders’ defense headlined a 10-3 win over the Warriors to retain the ILH crown. A week later, Chang threw two touchdown passes, both to fellow sophomore Gerald Welch, in a 27-0 win over Waianae to extend Saint Louis’ Prep Bowl dominance to 12 straight titles.
“Losing (the first Kamehameha game), he really took it hard,” Lee said. “But he worked. The following week we changed a few things to help him and he hung in there and he did his job.
“He went in at a tough time and did a heck of a job.”
Out of that postseason run emerged a high school career that set a new standard for Hawaii quarterbacks. His Oahu record of 8,001 career yards stood for 17 years before Tua Tagovailoa, another Crusader, passed the mark in 2016 and Mililani’s Dillion Gabriel reset the target again in 2018.
According to Hawaiiprepworld.com, Chang’s 3,985 yards as a senior year in 1999 remains the single-season record as do his 113 career touchdown passes. Remarkably, Chang amassed his career totals on 771 attempts, the fewest among the top 10 passers on the list.
Under Chang’s command, Saint Louis won the final Prep Bowl in 1998 and the first HHSAA state championship in 1999.
Lee had moved on to join June Jones’ inaugural coaching staff at the University of Hawaii in 1999 and Chang joined him the following season as a cornerstone piece of the Warriors’ recruiting class.
With the UH offense scuffling early in the 2000 season, Chang earned his first college start three games into his freshman year and went on to break NCAA’s all-time passing yardage record before closing his career in a 59-40 win over Alabama-Birmingham in the 2004 Hawaii Bowl.
“He was looking at the Pac-12 but they didn’t run the kind of offense June was running,” said Lee, the Warriors’ receivers coach back then. “Timmy was undersized, but because he was smart he had a really good football IQ and he was able to pick up the offense right away.”
Chang’s origin story as one of the state’s storied quarterbacks comes to mind as the now 40-year-old (40? Seriously?) prepares for another challenging and unexpected debut as the University of Hawaii football program’s 25th head coach.
A month ago, Chang was preparing to move from Reno, Nev., to Fort Collins, Colo., following former Nevada head coach Jay Norvell to Colorado State.
A state senate hearing, the resignation of Todd Graham and a messy breakdown in negotiations with Jones and suddenly Chang is back in the local spotlight with a program’s fortunes in his hands.
After those three contentious Fridays in January, the fourth had a far more celebratory feel when Chang was formally introduced at SimpiFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center. Welch, a teammate of Chang’s from the sixth grade through their college careers at UH, was among the Warriors alumni in the arena to help welcome the program’s passing leader back to Manoa.
“When he came in the huddle he was all excited and we fed off of that,” Welch said of Chang’s on-field leadership. “All the guys were excited to play for him and I hope these kids are excited to play for him too because he’s a tremendous coach.”
Having kept in communication with Chang during his progression in a far-flung college coaching career to date, Lee also expressed confidence in his former pupil’s ability to lead the Rainbow Warriors into a new era.
“He’s young, he’s got a lot of passion for the game and he’ll relate well with the kids,” Lee said.
“He had good leadership with the players in high school, now he’s gotta show that kind of leadership to the coaches and the team. It’s a whole different role. He’s not an assistant, he’s the man now.
“He’ll do it though. The kid’s a winner.”
Source: Star
