Tongans On Their Way To Becoming Cougars

Washington State University is 5,905 miles from Tonga.

But a 21-year-old Tonga native, Tulutulu Kalaniuvalu, a 1988 graduate of Seattle's Rainier Beach High School, hopes to complete that journey next fall.

So does his younger brother, Alai, 18, a Franklin High School graduate, and his cousin, Filipe Tuivai, 21, who graduated from West Seattle High.

Steve Sneed, WSU's director of minority affairs, said it is believed that they would be the first South Pacific islanders to attend WSU from the Seattle area since Jack Thompson, the ``Throwin' Samoan'' from Highline's Evergreen High School, completed touchdown passes for the Cougars in the late 1970s.

Steve Nakata, WSU minority recruiter, said Tuivai, who has been attending Wenatchee Community College, has been accepted.

As to the Kalaniuvalu brothers, Alai's transcripts have been received, and a decision will be made on his admission by the end of the month. He was at Walla Walla Community College the past year.

``On Tulutulu we're still waiting for his transcripts,'' Nakata said. ``Otherwise, I think he has a great chance of getting in. We just need that proof.''

Tulutulu Kalaniuvalu, stands 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 305 pounds. An offensive tackle who won All-Metro AA second-team honors when he played for Rainier Beach High School, he was voted a second-team all-community-college conference player at Spokane Falls Community College last fall.

Tulutulu Kalaniuvalu plans to be a ``walk-on'' with the Cougar football team, hoping eventually to land a football scholarship.

His brother, Alai, an All-Metro AAA center-guard at Franklin, also hopes to play for the Cougars. Alai is working in Hawaii for the summer as an airline baggage-handler.

But football isn't Tulutulu Kalaniuvalu's only goal in life - someday he'd like to be a member of the Seattle Police Department. He plans to major in law-enforcement at WSU.

This summer he will be interning days with Seattle police and working evenings at the Rainier Beach High School gymnasium in a summer youth program for Tongan and other South Pacific islander youth.

Paul Pitu, Samoan intervention outreach services coordinator for the Seattle Public Schools, said Tulutulu is ``very important as a role model'' for Tongan youth. Tulutulu knows that youngsters look up to him. ``I talk to them about going to college,'' he said.

Not getting an education means ending up in jobs like washing dishes, he said. ``You aren't going to survive doing that kind of job.''

And Tulutulu said youngsters need to be set straight about sports. Football can be fun, he said, ``. . . but you don't know when you're going to get hurt. You should have something to back it up . . . You're not going to play football all your life.''

Residents of Nukualofa, Tonga's capital, the Kalaniuvalu family joined relatives in Hawaii when Tulutulu was a 1-year-old because his father, Afui, a member of the Tongan nobility, needed the use of a dialysis machine for kidney problems.

Tulutulu and two younger brothers attended schools in Hawaii until he finished the sixth grade. The family returned to Tonga, but was back in Hawaii for his freshman year in high school. A year later, they came to Seattle because a doctor had recommended the cooler, milder weather to his father.

His father is unable to work, he said, but his mother, Mele, is a cook in the Renton High School cafeteria days and a janitor for Seattle City Light evenings.

``When I first came to Seattle from Hawaii my English wasn't that good,'' Tulutulu said. He was assigned to the bilingual program at Rainier Beach. But although he was a slow learner, Tulutulu was not afraid to seek help. ``Some of those kids are too shy to ask teachers,'' he said.

``Whenever I got a problem, I talked to the teacher or instructor . . . That's what teachers are there for - to teach you.''

Pitu said that Seattle's South Pacific islander leaders are pushing education for their young people.

The community has three priorities - religion, preserving its customs and education. ``We are pushing education to become No. 1 for our new generations,'' Pitu said. ``. . . Of course, God is first in everything we do, but in American society education is No. 1, and everything else follows.''

In the past the community has been faced with high dropout rates among its students, Pitu noted. Seattle School demographers estimate there are about 600 Pacific islander children in the city system, including 453 Samoans last fall. Pitu said the Seattle South Pacific islander community appreciates Washington State University ``because it is one of the few universities that recognizes South Pacific islanders and recruits them.

``We would like to get the attention of other universities . . . to realize that Pacific islander Americans need to be approached and recruited,'' Pitu said. ``We've always been buried under `other ethnic' groups . . . We don't want to be forgotten.''