San Jose State's Hawaii Ties Shape Mountain West Matchup With Rainbow Warriors

Saturday's Mountain West football game at the Clarence T.C. Ching Complex doubles as a homecoming for San Jose State coaches, players and families tied to Hawaii.

San Jose State's trip to Hawaii plays as both a conference game and a family gathering. The Mountain West matchup on Saturday at the Clarence T.C. Ching Complex links two programs whose histories overlap in nearly every corner.

Five San Jose State coaches played for the Rainbow Warriors, a group led by head coach Kenny Niumatalolo. A sixth, offensive line coach Ramsen Golpashin, worked as a Hawaii graduate assistant, and five Spartans are Hawaii high school graduates.

Some of the deepest ties reach back to high school. Niumatalolo and defensive pass-game coordinator Brian Norwood starred in two sports at Radford High, where Hawaii head coach Timmy Chang's father, Levi Chang, guided the Rams basketball team in the 1980s. Timmy Chang said his father coached both men and that he respects them deeply, as athletes and as coaches. Niumatalolo remembers winning an OIA title on Levi Chang's junior varsity squad with a pressing, uptempo approach, while the varsity ran a slower, more deliberate offense.

Saint Louis School supplies another thread. In 1997, Timmy Chang was a sophomore quarterback and Craig Stutzmann a senior slotback there; Stutzmann committed to Hawaii and joined a receiving quartet featuring slotback Channon Harris and wideouts Justin Colbert and Ashley Lelie. Chang said watching how much Stutzmann enjoyed playing for the Warriors shaped his own decision to commit to the school.

Stutzmann grew up on Varsity Circle, just outside Hawaii's Lower Campus, near an apartment once shared by linebackers Chris Brown, Pisa Tinoisamoa, Matt Wright and Keani Alapi. Brown, now Hawaii's associate head coach, described it as the team's gathering spot after practices, complete with a picnic table that players etched their names into until it resembled hockey's Stanley Cup. Craig Stutzmann came by regularly, sometimes with his younger brother Billy Ray, a future Warrior.

In 2003, Craig Stutzmann took charge of Saint Louis' junior varsity and rounded up former teammates, offering jobs to Wright, Jonathan Kauka and La'anui Correa and naming Brown his defensive coordinator. The Crusaders claimed the JV title in what was Brown's first coaching job, an experience he has described as the most fun he has had in the profession.

The strands came together in San Jose two decades later. Hired in 2024 after a long run at Navy, Niumatalolo brought in Craig Stutzmann to install his spread-and-shred offense and added Billy Ray Stutzmann as receivers coach, Norwood in January and Golpashin as successor to former Hawaii center and guard John Estes. The pattern extends to the field: Luke Weaver, 2-0 as a Hawaii starter last season and the passer on the touchdown that decided the 2025 Hawaii Bowl, now starts at quarterback for the Spartans.

Niumatalolo's own island story runs decades deep. Raised in the Mormon faith, he hawked newspaper lineups at Aloha Stadium in his youth, played quarterback on the 1989 Hawaii team that broke BYU's hold on the rivalry series, and owns a home in Manoa. He has still pushed his players to shut out the distractions and treat Saturday as a pivotal Mountain West game. Hawaii feels the same urgency: Brown, with the Warriors off to a 1-3 start, framed the week as business, said mistakes have been corrected, and called it a fresh start.

For the Stutzmann family, the game splits loyalties. Patriarch Bill Stutzmann and his father-in-law, Ray Onosaki, would carry folding chairs up a hillside beside Hawaii's practice field to watch his sons, a routine Bill recalled as a charmed life of practices, games and road trips; Onosaki died in 2016. He also remembered young Billy Ray drawing six or seven Hawaii players to his youth practices. With his wife away this week to look after their sons' dogs, Bill Stutzmann will attend the game and conceded he expects to be dressed in blue.