KAILUA-KONA — Old Kona Airport is a staple of recreation in the community. Each year, the 217-acre plot of land hosts an average of 16,000 athletes of young and old — ranging from keiki soccer athletes, to high school swimmers and divers, to kupuna softball.
So, how does such a small area manage so many activities and athletes? To put it simply — they’re crammed together.
“A typical Tuesday afternoon would have about 12 youth teams of four different sports sharing three fields,” Kona native and WeGo! Foundation President Rebekah Lussiaa told West Hawaii Today. “If you’re lucky, a team gets a quarter of the field, if that.”
On top of limited practice space, the fields themselves are in unsatisfactory, overused condition due to uneven lie — posing risk for injuries in athletes. Local futsal courts have poor conditions, surrounded by homelessness and drug users. With practically nowhere else to practice in town due to lack of outside funding and other factors, local sports organizations do not have much of a choice. Kekuaokalani Gymnasium is the town’s only public recreational facility, which currently has a leaking roof. All of the local high schools have their own athletes and venues to manage as far as the use of their facilities.
“It’s extremely challenging to find even one-third of field space on any given day to support and train the 170 members in our club,” President of City SC Hawai’i, formerly known as Kona Crush Soccer Academy, Ryan Kreps added. “In Kona, the county does its best to disperse field space among the various sports programs that are continually growing. It’s a great problem to have so many teams, sports and active keiki in our community.
“We work hard to share the designated space amongst the various coaches and sports out there on any given day. However, the big problem is that there isn’t much space to share. This problem can create animosity amongst teams that are all fighting for the same thing — keeping the keiki of our community active.”
Space and maintenance issues in local athletics have been a hurdle in the community for quite some time. As mayoral candidate Dr. Kimo Alameda put it so precisely: “West Hawaii is not feeling the love. Districts 7, 8, and 9 produce 70% of the property tax that becomes the budget for the county, but they are only feeling about 30% of the love. It’s like buying all the food for the party but not getting invited.”
Only a very small percentage goes towards local recreational funding. Minimal allocation, crammed budgets, permitting problems and slowed initiatives have led to little-to-no progress over the years — which has even shied families away from letting their keiki participate in recreation. While the Kona proper is the ideal region to host a plethora of local events because of its weather, which can help all local small businesses, plans are often delegated to the Hilo side due to lack of resources.
“Unfortunately, the west side of the island has been neglected for decades, and everybody knows it,” Lussiaa said. “I appreciate all that the county does and I understand that county workers are doing the best they can and their hands are often tied, but our system needs to be changed and expedited so things don’t take as long.
“Politicians talk about it, but we need to see more action. It seems like progress here takes at least 15 years, minimum. Each kid has their own story to tell. How many more generations of young people will we lose in the amount of time it takes to see anything come to fruition?”
Being born and raised in Kona, an athlete her entire life, involved in sports medicine at Kealakehe High School for 10 years and a parent herself, Lussiaa truly understands the benefits and importance of the younger generation’s involvement in sports and fitness. In Hawai‘i, risk for diabetes, drug usage and teen pregnancy is high. A 2018 study showed that native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. Additionally, the American Diabetes Association reported in 2023 that 10.6% of the state’s population are diabetics. The Kaiser Family Foundation stated that drug overdose death rates in Hawai‘i increased from 12.4 per 100,000 in 2011 to 17.3 per 100,000 by 2021. In 2022, the CDC reported Hawai‘i being the 12th-highest state in teen birth rate.
“When I went to Konawaena in the early 1990s, it had the highest rate of teen pregnancy per capita in the nation,” Luisaa said.
“If these kids don’t have a community that supports and helps them, then they are much more likely to go down another dangerous and unhealthy road. We have witnessed way too many of those stories,” Lussiaa said. “But if they’re surrounded by a community that truly cares and offers them more healthy opportunities and brings them the excellence that they all deserve, then they will rise to the occasion.”
The staggering numbers, along with the little athletic facilities across the community, caused Lussiaa to take action.
“We were tired of waiting for something to be done,” she said. “This is not about us. It is about doing what is necessary and will make a difference. When God puts you in a position to take action in whatever little ways you can, you just do it.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her husband Thibert founded the nonprofit WeGo! Foundation, which targets talented young athletes in at-risk or undeserved households by supporting them through specific sports such as soccer and the Hawaiian cultural watersports of paddling, surfing and swimming.
The organization has partnered with other local organizations that share the same heart to put on community events for the kids, such as the HSA Surf Organization, Keiki Surf for the Earth, Big Island Jr. Vaa for the Moku O Keawe Challenge, City SC Hawai‘i, the Hawai‘i Fitness Foundation for the First Responders Invitational and the Hawai‘i International Futsal Cup coming up in the beginning of August, just to name a few.
“My heart and soul is for the kids here in our community,” Lussiaa said. “Once we find those kids, we sponsor them with what we are able to, as our annual budget that needs to be raised every year. We also partner and put on events which can touch the lives of even higher numbers of our kids. By doing this, we know we can make a difference — one kid at a time without having to wait for years of empty promises.
“Even with two working parents, you can barely make it here. Living here on an island, for an athlete to get showcased on a larger stage in order to be possibly looked at for college scholarships or beyond, is a minimum of $15,000 per year. Our purpose is to touch individual lives by using sports to teach character and help nurture our next community leaders. On a larger scale, I will continue to push towards doing capital improvement projects here on the west side.”
WeGo! firmly believes expansion of athletic fields and a new multipurpose facility will solve many of these local issues — allowing more children to participate in sports and opening up additional job opportunities while supporting the surrounding small businesses. While the team has been searching for properties over the last few years, Lussiaa admits they can’t do it alone.
“We’ve also been looking all over for facilities to lease or purchase, but nothing has been the right fit,” she said. “Believe it or not, funding (for the projects) can be the easy part if people trust and believe in you, and you have built those relationships. If you have a business plan in place, it will pay for itself, and the kids will eventually want to give back as well.
“But we also need to vote in a mayor that is on our side — one that will really show us action instead of just words. With the elections coming up, we want our voices and our concerns to be heard in a positive light…we don’t want to sit here and complain. We want to be a part of the solution.”
No matter how long action for change takes, Lussiaa and We Go! will keep fighting for a better athletic community — even if no one else will step in.
“Being born and raised here, I feel like it’s my responsibility to leave this place better than we found it for the next generation,” Lussiaa said. “We are not going to stop; we are going to keep looking. But things still need to change.”
