LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Bundled up in a coat amid a cold, driving rain, assistant football coach Roy Gerela worked with a group of New Mexico State kickers in deserted Aggie Stadium as darkness began to descend the other night.

It was, he admitted, a far cry from the days at his alma mater, Kalani High, back in Honolulu.

He is reminded daily just how far by a cell phone that shows a Hawaiian sunset. And by an office given over to posters of waterfalls, Hawai'i landscapes and ocean shots. "We usually have nice weather here, but there's no ocean," Gerela laments.

Forty years after he physically left Hawai'i, the most accomplished kicker to come out of a Hawai'i high school, the eventual owner of three Super Bowl rings still hasn't parted mentally.

Tomorrow's Western Athletic Conference football game will be a vivid four-quarter reminder of that as the Aggies play the University of Hawai'i. Officially, it is Aggie homecoming. Unofficially, it is a homecoming of sorts for this 1969 NMSU graduate, too, even if the 59-year-old Gerela won't be any closer to the 50th state than the opposite sideline.

The Aggies have 10 players with Hawai'i ties on their active roster. Gerela tries to help ease their adjustment to the southwest. Never mind that Gerela, a 1965 Kalani graduate, played with people the players' fathers grew up watching, Gerela is a link to home, when Hawai'i is more than 3,000 miles away. Someone who understands Island ways. But, truth be told, you get the idea that the aloha on the growing Hawai'i pipeline flows both ways. That he relishes the contact with local players and local customs. That it brings back some of his youth, too.

For it was in Hawai'i that a well-traveled, Canadian-born youngster found a home in a personally turbulent period in the early 1960s. His parents died while he was just starting his teenage years and he ended up being taken in by a married sister and her husband, who lived in Hawai'i. At Kalani his athletic abilities in several sports helped the newcomer, dizzied by the turn of events, find fast acceptance and friends. "My years there were good times and I made a lot of good friends, people I still hear from," Gerela said.

His exploits in baseball and football won him a scholarship to New Mexico State, where he excelled in both sports. But it was an 11-year NFL career, that included a starring role in Super Bowl X with two broken-ribbed field goals and a tackle in Pittsburgh's 21-17 win over Dallas, that he is best remembered for back home. It is what people back home will most recall when the TV camera pans his way.

Here, however, there has been scant time for remembrances. Precious little time devoted to nostalgic thought. The Aggies lost their field goal kicker in the spring to a career-ending traffic accident, and because of NCAA Academic Performance Rating sanctions, had no scholarship available to bring in a new one. So Gerela is trying to make do with some walk-ons, including a soccer team member who came out this week in response to head coach Hal Mumme's open tryout call.

One day, Gerela said, he hopes to recruit a kicker from Hawai'i to NMSU. Someone, perhaps, to both fill a team need and complete a personal circle. And, if that meant a trip back to Hawai'i, well, you get the idea he wouldn't mind that at all.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.