Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: 10 Notes on Senior Chad Hanaoka
10/23/2018 9:21:00 AM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUSports.com Special Contributor
Ten things about The Video Kid, whom the Northwestern coaches selected as the Offensive Player of the Week for his work against Rutgers. . . .
1. In the program he is senior running back Chad Hanaoka, a walk-on who didn't have a roster spot available to him when he landed in Evanston. "But they said I could become part of the staff, get to know some of the coaches, be around the guys," he recalls, and so he joined the team's video staff for that 2014 season. He, concurrently, also followed a personal program drawn up for him by the strength staff, and so was ready to roll when winter workouts began in early 2015. But first he had to visit the office of Chris Bowers, the team's director of player personnel. "I knock on the door and I'm like, 'Hey, am I joining the team now? I see them working indoors now.'
"It took a couple days, but day three of winter workouts I got out there with the guys. A lot of them were surprised to see me. I moved into the locker room, I had a locker in there, and everyone was kinda looking at me like, 'What's the video guy doing in here?' It was intimidating. But I knew a lot of them."
2. His new teammates were not the only ones who were surprised. "I remember him when he was in the video office and he seemed a really nice kid. Then I went out to winter workouts and he's going through winter workouts and I'm going, 'What's the Video Kid doing going through the workouts?'" Pat Fitzgerald recalls. "I didn't even know his name. I didn't get the memo that he was going to walk on, try out for the team. So shame on me. Then he was just kicking rear end going through the workouts and I'm like, 'The Video Kid's pretty good.' Then we played football and I figured out his name was Chad, so then I started calling him Ochocinco (after the former NFL receiver). I didn't know his last name. Hanaoka. Ochocinco to me was easier than Hanaoka at the time."
"When Coach Fitz came out for Winning Edge, just before spring ball, he saw me running around out there," says Hanaoka himself. "I forget who told me this story, but he said, 'Bowers, why are you adding guys to my team without telling me?' He had no idea I was out there."
3. He grew up out there in Honolulu, where his five-foot tall mom and five-foot-four tall dad held football season tickets for the University of Hawai'i. So early on he started attending its games and then at recess he started playing it as well. "It was me and three of my buddies, and we'd play against 20 other dudes and just dominate every recess," he remembers. "Finally my mom let me play tackle football in sixth grade. I ended up having an injury that year, so it wasn't a great start to my career. But the love of football started at an early age, and fortunately my mom was cool about letting me go out and play."
4. That injury was a fractured wrist. "I was Scout Team running back and none of our O linemen blocked anybody. So all four of our D linemen converged on me," he says. "At the time I was four-nine, 85, 90 pounds. I've grown a considerable amount since then. Not as much as I hoped. That was a fun time, though. We went 2 and 11 that season. It was good."
He is now, for the record, five-foot-six and 180 pounds.
5. During his junior year at the 'Iolani School, which he helped lead to a pair of Division II state titles, he sent out a mass e-mail. "It was," he says, "basically a template with my grades and a link to my highlight film. I'd just change the school and the name of the coach every time I sent it out."
6. He looked at Harvard and at Princeton and even put down a sizable deposit (he remembers it as $5,000) at Washington University in St. Louis. "But," he says, "here is where I kind of had my eye set. I watched a lot of what used to be called The Hunt. I used to watch a lot of those episodes in class and kind of dream about having this opportunity. Seeing how the players and coaches talked about this really being a family, I felt that was something I really needed being so far from home. A place where I had the opportunity to play major, Division I football, get a great education, but also a place where—especially as a walk-on— just to be treated like all the other guys, that was really important to me. When I came on my visit, spring of my senior year in high school, I really felt that. Even though I wasn't a top priority recruit or a top priority walk-on, the recruiting staff knew who I was. They cared about me. They showed me around. Then I really knew this was a special place."
7. But, ultimately, he was wait listed for admission, so the 'Cats could not hold a roster spot for him. This is when he morphed into 'The Video Kid.'
8. When he morphed back to a player, he just kept at it even though his Saturday opportunities were rare. This did not go unnoticed by his teammates and, before the start of this season, they awarded him the No. 1 jersey that goes to the player who best represents what it means to be a Wildcat. "It means the world to me because it comes from my teammates," he says of this honor. "Until this season I didn't really have much of a role on Saturdays and was mainly a practice player, a scout team guy. For them to recognize my work ethic and to see that I was embracing my role and doing everything I possibly could to help this team, for me that meant the most that it was coming from those guys— especially the older guys that I've battled with the last three, four, five years. That meant a lot to me."
9. Then Jeremy Larkin was forced to retire, and injuries sidelined Solomon Vault, John Moten IV and Jesse Brown, and now the running back room was down to him and the first years Drake Anderson and Isaiah Bowser. So there he was against Nebraska, playing in crunch time and protecting Clayton Thorson in the overtime win, and then there he was again last Saturday in New Jersey, where he gained 26 yards on six carries and caught a pair of passes for 15 and cut block a Rutgers' blitzer and sent him spinning. "You never know when your opportunity is going to come, just be prepared. He's been prepared," Fitzgerald says of his perseverance and emergence. "That's two weeks in a row Chad stepped up."
"Guys like Justin (Jackson), guys like Jeremy whom I've watched from the side and watched in the meeting rooms have taught me how to prepare and be ready for my moment," says Hanaoka himself. "But it's kinda crazy. I can't say I expected all of this, where I am today. Just grateful the coaches gave me an opportunity and just to reiterate, (grateful) my teammates believe in me means so much when I go out there. I can go out there and play confidently and do my job."
10. He is on a pre-med track, but uncertain just which specialty he will pursue. Still, Fitzgerald says, "I told him when I get older he's going to be my doctor."
"I don't know if I would be Fitz's doctor," the Video Kid will say upon hearing that.
Then, with a glint in his eyes, Chad Hanaoka will conclude, "Though I have considered geriatrics."
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