From high school to youth leagues, Mike Tressler has never stopped teaching football.
The former Hawaii player, now the finance director for the County of Kauai, has also been itching for a chance to coach at the prep level again. He has his chance now as the new head coach at Kapaa.
The Kauai graduate had a previous stint at Kapaa under then-coach Philip Rapozo, who was released this season after five KIF titles in six years.
Google Mike Tressler and you will find a mini Hawaii football helmet autographed by Alvis Satele and Tressler for sale on eBay. The mini helmet may or may not be on the market now, but the memories — and success — of the Rainbow Warriors during the Bob Wagner era are still cherished.
In 2014, Bob Hogue’s weekly MidWeek column featured former UH football and baseball player Carlos Anderson, who noted Tressler as one of his favorites. Anderson was a 5-foot-8, 175-pound All-State performer in football and baseball at Leilehua before matriculating to Manoa.
“I remember one of my favorite football players at the time was Mike Tressler,” Anderson told Hogue, now commissioner of the PacWest Conference. “He also wasn’t real tall, but he was tough and I wanted to be just like him.”
Tressler doesn’t recall reading the column.
“I don’t know if I saw it. Carlos was a great guy. Leilehua guy. I guess I had a favorable impact on him. He did well. Great attitude, and more mentally and physically tough than a lot of athletes. We bonded well. We were teammates and friends,” Tressler said, recalling the end of his college playing days.
“The 1991 Hula Bowl, we had the Iraq War, so we played the game but it changed the whole environment. The country’s going to war, and it’s an all-star game,” he said. “It was still cool to be a part of it.”
Coach Tressler, 51, chatted about the new challenge in his first head coaching job.
PH: How do you feel about being hired to be a varsity head coach for the first time.
MT: It is exciting. With our group of coaches, we do this for the kids. We want to help them get to college, have opportunities to play college ball and, of course, education is a big part of it. Our family has stuck together and it’s our chance to do things our way. I’ve always been a coordinator, and I did more than coordinate and coach special teams. It’s a chance to do what we love to do and give these kids the best coaching they can get here on Kauai. We’ve got really good mentors and connections, and we often tap into those resources. Guys are excited, but proof is in the pudding. We need to produce.
PH: Is it going to be a consistent system from varsity to JV?
MT: Coaching takes a lot of time and effort the way we coach. We have very like-minded JV staff that understands the program. From that respect, the unity and loyalty is super important for us. Same offense, defense, special teams terminology. Practice style. Coaching style. We’re going to extend and get involved with the youth leagues. You really want to build a good program, that’s where it starts, so we will engage in that.
PH: Some of the smoothest transitions I’ve seen involve bringing in coaches from the youth levels like Kohala has done with youth league coaches.
MT: (On Kauai), KYF has three districts, three divisions. When we coached KYF (Unlimited), we played a lot of Oahu teams and did very well. That’s part of the formula in building that success and excitement. The quicker you can get to the program and play at the varsity level, that’s what we want our kids to be motivated to do. We really didn’t have those challenges. We hope that trend continues for us.
PH: What has your coaching background been like?
MT: A lot of years as an assistant coach. I coached at Kaiser, coached at Kauai and Kapaa.
PH: You’ve been a defensive coordinator for a long time. Are you still going to be the DC?
MT: No. I have very capable coaches. I have a great coaching staff. I’m going to try my best to let them coach and try to provide guidance. We’ve been coaching together for awhile. The defensive coordinator is Willy Marshall. They know our system and our base defense really well. I’m going to focus on special teams.
PH: That is so vintage UH football. How about terminology, x’s and o’s and trying to implement anything with a COVID-19 lockdown?
MT: Having no spring ball, as a coach you want that face time, but fortunately I coached there (at Kapaa) three years and in KYF. A lot of these seniors and juniors, We have that relationship with a bunch of these kids. We’re hoping the transition is easy. We’ll find out. Terminology, it’s not going to be a huge transition at all, I don’t think.
PH: I really got to see KIF football up close in the 1990s through the Neighbor Island Football Classic. It was almost always the KIF and MIL champions playing for the title. Great teams and players. Until then, though, I had no idea being from Oahu. What do you think most football fans outside of Kauai don’t realize about KIF football?
MT: They don’t realize that it’s very competitive. The history of the state tournament, we’ve been to the state championship game many times and have done well competing across the state. we have three teams that tend to know everything about the other one after the first round. It’s really challenging to keep the kids motivated and focused. It gets competitive that way. Kids are tough here. Very physical, so when we do face teams from the other islands, physically, that’s never been a big problem.
PH: The latest is that the season could start without preseason games and have a reduced number of games. What do you think about starting maybe in June if the pandemic eases up?
MT: All team sports require bonding, getting together. In football, 50 players (varsity), it’s going to take more time than that.
PH: It must be a major test of patience for coaches and athletes.
MT: I think people are getting really edgy. Kauai’s been really good, but people want to do things. It’s interesting how this will progress. We’re already almost in June. They’re talking switching seasons.
PH: It would make more sense. (Saint Louis) Coach Ron Lee talked about it last week, pushing the football season back to winter and reducing risk, providing more preparation time.
MT: I saw it on the news and I knew there’s discussion about that. It makes sense. I would hate to just start rolling into it and then the second week, you’ve got to shut everything down. We’ll control what we can control. Football takes more time. It’s a process. Some kids haven’t been able to work out. We don’t know yet. We’re all hoping to get more normalized by June 1. I work at the county and everybody should kind of understand the reality of what the new normal is. There’s so many unknowns. That’s the hard part.
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