Lights Out: Birds Trump Friday Night Football

Flickr: mikebaird

We know the ritual. The clock winds down to zero. The players head to the locker room, some jubilant, others beaten. The clean-up crew goes to work. And then, after everyone files out of the stadium, the lights are shut down.

Only this time, that may happen on a Friday night on Kauai for the last time, or at least for the foreseeable future.

And it's all being done for the birds.

Games once heralded as Friday night pau hana community gatherings will now be held Saturday afternoons, and the community outcry highlights that Kauai's ballfields are merely the latest battleground in a struggle between the rituals of modern life and the desire to protect the environment, the plants and animals that make Hawaii special.

Friday night lights, an American tradition right alongside apple pie and celebrity gossip, is butting up against a tradition of revering nature exemplified by the 160-year-old Hawaii motto that dates back to kingdom days: "The Life of the Land is Perpetuated in Righteousness."

State Rep. James Tokioka, who represents the Kauai county seat of Lihue and sat on the Kauai County Council before he headed to the Legislature, says it's frustrating and disappointing for him and others in the community to see Friday night football come to an end, even temporarily.

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