Football
NAHOLOWAA RETIRES AFTER 50 YEARS OF COACHING
Longest running football coach hangs up his whistle
By Patrick Lujan
A high school football staple is hanging up his coaching whistle after 50 years.
For the first time since 1975, Jimmy Naholowaa won’t be teaching the game he so loved as part of a coaching staff, retiring as the long-time head coach of the Sanchez Sharks.
“It’s definitely time to retire. Fishing is calling me more and more,” said the avid fisherman Naholowaa, who started coaching the JFK Gold a year after graduating from JFK in 1974.
“He’s a really good line coach. The best for a long time,” coaching rival from GW Ryan Rios said. “You know he’s is a good coach because he put out a good line with little participation he had every year.”
A storied coaching career that took him from north to south and back north, Naholowaa has been faced with one challenge after another in the generations he spent at the practice field and sidelines. But it was the recent obstacle of Sanchez High sharing the JFK campus that proved too much for him to overcome, making his decision to walk away from the game that much easier.
“Two years ago when we first had the split (schedule), we couldn’t find enough players and we didn’t have a team. These last two years have been so tough to get guys to come out. We have to practice in the morning, go home, then go to school (in the afternoon),” he explained. “We aren’t allowed to practice at JFK. Last year, we found a field to practice at. We were blessed because we had guys who drove. We were lucky to get an hour and a half of practice (per day).”
WATCH: Coach Naholowaa on GSPN (2014)
COACHING CHRONOLOGY
After multiple All-Island selections playing at JFK and eventually playing with the historic UOG Tritons in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Naholowaa was always known to possess and teach the art of offensive blocking. Here is a look back:
1975-79: JFK Gold assistant coach
1980-82: JFK Gold head coach
1983-85: Inarajan Eagles head coach
1986-89: FD Friars head coach
1990-1996: Sanchez Sharks head coach
1997: GCC Tradesmen head coach
1998-2024: Sanchez Sharks head coach
When coaching the Eagles down south, majority of the team were from FD. It was in 1986 when a couple of wealthy parents funded the formation of the Friars on their own with Naholowaa as the head coach. Prior to that dating back to the 70’s, FD students had teamed up with GCC and Inarajan.
“We did ok,” Naholowaa remembers the genesis of the Friars football program. “We had some winning seasons.”
After picking up a PE teaching position at Sanchez in 1990, it was a natural transition to head the Sharks football squad, and that’s where he’d go on to win seven championships!
50-YEAR REFLECTION
Reflecting on a half a century of coaching, the 68-year-old Naholowaa looks back at how the game has changed on Guam.
“It was old school. It is what it was with old school skills. The way you hit was different. There’s so much holding in this game and the referees can’t see it. I can’t deal with that. The rules have changed so much, that to me, it’s not real football anymore.
“When (youth football players) get to high school, it’s such a chore to re-teach kids. It’s easier to get a player who hasn’t played youth football, than to re-teach bad habits.”
Andre Artero, who was by Naholowaa’s side for the better part of three decades as an assistant, said that basic skills and conditioning was heavily emphasized in the program.
“The best players played regardless of age or size,” Artero said. “If you didn’t work hard or skipped practice you didn’t see playing time on game day. He sat starters even during playoffs.”
WISHBONE
The good ol’ wishbone formation. Full house. Double tight. It’s the fundamental formation used to teach the basics on the offensive side of the ball. It’s the formation that Naholowaa never strayed away from in his entire coaching career.
“It works so well,” he explained. “We played it in high school. It’s easy to understand when you understand your responsibilities. We used it at UOG with Hal (Shiroma). It’s something we made work and it wasn’t broken, so we just kept using it. The difference is if we had the personnel. It was getting harder to teach kids their responsibilities, when we didn’t have enough practice time.
“If you knew your responsibilities, it was very effective. We spent our time teaching our linemen how to block, and we ran from there. We could deviate from that wishbone to so many different plays and looks. It was good for us. We made it work.”
There were two things you could expect against a Naholowaa team: the wishbone offense and no PAT kicks (unless you were Carlo Tambora).
WHAT WILL HE MISS?
“Certainly, teaching the kids and watching them make their plays work. Watching them using their skills and excelling with it. That’s what I’ll miss the most. It’s certainly not the long hours.”
Football wasn’t the only sport Coach Jimmy coached. Believe it or not, he spent some 30 years coaching the Sharks girls softball team and garnered just as many championships with the girls has he did with the football team.
As the Sharks sports program turns a big coaching page, GSPN wishes Coach Jimmy all the best away from the coaching spotlight and may the big fish bite.
NOTES: stepping into the seat as head coach for the Sharks is Nikolas Masnayan; Naholowaa is not retiring from his PE teaching duties at Sanchez – not just yet.
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