As the University of Hawai'i celebrates its homecoming tonight, on an opposite Aloha Stadium sideline New Mexico State assistant coach Roy Gerela has reason to consider it one also.

That and a lot more. For in the day and a half preceding the 6:05 p.m. kickoff, time planned to see old friends and dust off memories, the 58-year-old has had ample opportunity to ponder the turn of events that dislodged him from his native Canada and brought him to Hawai'i, which would become an important crossroads in his life just over 40 years ago.

"I met a lot of great people here and have a lot of fond memories here," Gerela said. "The best of my education years were spent at Kalani High."

The two years at Kalani, where he was a 1965 graduate, would be the jumping off point to a college athletic scholarship and an 11-year NFL career punctuated with three Super Bowl rings with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Gerela's two field goals in Super Bowl X, both made with cracked ribs suffered making a tackle of Preston Pearson on a kickoff, helped the Steelers beat Dallas, 21-17.

A life hardly imaginable early on for the 10th of 11 children born to Ukrainian immigrants who worked the mills of Western Canada. Hawai'i was but a distant paradise on a map when his father died and Gerela, at age 13, was eventually sent to live with an older sister. "It was very tough to leave your mother, sisters and brothers," Gerela said.

Initially sent to Washington state, Gerela suddenly found himself in Honolulu when his brother-in-law was transferred a year later.

After a few days at Kalani, Gerela said, "my counselor called me in and suggested I transfer to Punahou. I asked why and he said here I might have to do some fighting.

"I said, 'Why should I have to fight?' He said I might not get along with some of the other kids and have some problems. I said, 'I'm not gonna have any problems, I'll just stick it out here.' I came in with an open mind and, you know what, I had nothing but good experiences at Kalani."

A soccer and ice hockey player turned football and baseball player in the United States, Gerela found his niche in sports, eventually winning the Falcons' scholar-athlete award as a senior.

Beyond the football fundamentals that earned him a scholarship to New Mexico State to play football and baseball, Gerela found an interest in academics that helped open the way. "Coming from a family of 11, you didn't learn the proper tools of studying and the academic part of life," Gerela said. "But when I came here, I did because I was surrounded by kids (from whom) the academic area was important."

As a junior at New Mexico State, after watching the Gogolak brothers kick their way into the NFL soccer-style, Gerela, a straight on kickoff man at Kalani, called upon his own soccer background to find a pro calling.

A little over 40 years later, Gerela is back on a sideline in Hawai'i coming full circle on homecoming night. "It feels like I never left," he said.

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