The Tafuna Warriors will be missing fro m opening action for the 2016 2017 ASHHA football season on Saturday.
They will either be celebrating victory or agonizing over defeat in their surprise encounter with Los Angeles Dorsey High.
The Warriors are in the last week of a three week tour of Los Angeles where they have been training at the UCLA campus, and held scrimmages with high school football teams in the LA, Carson and Compton area.
Both the varsity and JV Warriors are on the trip which is led by head coach Kolose Ili.
The Tafuna Warriors got a mention in the LA Times.
The story says it’s not uncommon for a high school football program to look farther afield for its Week 1 opponent.
Still, the lengths Los Angeles’ Dorsey High has gone almost belies belief. Thirteen hours, to be exact.
Still in need of an opening opponent,Dorsey officially booked a home contest against Tafuna High School from American Samoa.
The schools are separated by roughly 13 hours … on a plane.
Indeed, Tafuna is only available for the contest because they are currently traveling in the U.S. with more than 50 players.
According to the Los Angeles Times’ Eric Sondheimer,the unlikely matchup will be competed at Jackie Robinson Stadium http://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/varsity-times/la-sp-vi-football-dorsey-to-play-team-from-american-samoa-20160822-story.html , where there are sure to be far more Dorsey fans but the atmosphere is likely to be particularly collegial, with the obvious exception of Tafuna’s opening Haka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRFZgRoKMNE .
The punch line, “Something tells us Dorsey will find a way to overlook the initial war call in favor of appreciation that the two teams are even available to compete against one another.
Tafuna will be home Monday night and will be ready to play Saturday of next week.
