2/23/2024 football Edit

FSU's Sione Lolohea left Tonga at 16, fulfilled his dream on football field

Curt Weiler • TheOsceola

Senior Writer

When Siuaki Livai first met Sione Lolohea in 2016, the 15-year-old Lolohea was living in Tonga with no knowledge of American football or even of the English language.

It didn't long watching Lolohea play rugby, though, for Livai to see his potential.

After retiring from his position as head coach of the Kahaku High football team in Honolulu in 2015, Livai launched the Polynesian-American Sports and Education non-profit organization, which seeks to find untapped football potential in remote Polynesian areas, specifically Tonga, and help set these prospects up with better lives by moving them to America, getting them involved with football and furthering their educations.

Livai quickly realized that Lolohea was a perfect prospect for his second class of prospects in 2016.

"When I met Sione, his mom's side is from a very athletic, well-known rugby family, so he was focused," Livai recalled to the Osceola. "He's a mama's boy, his mom really loves him. I think what makes Sione unique is he's very humble."

Lolohea was one of nine teenagers from Tonga who moved from their home country to Hawaii in that PASE 2016 class. Eight years later, he says he's the only one still playing football.

"It was hard. We all left home when we were 16, left our whole families back on the island," Lolohea said. "The thing is everyone has to do their own sacrifice to get where we're at. Thank God I'm still here."

He spent his first three years of high school learning football in Hawaii and then spent his final high-school season in San Bernardino, Calif., after his previous school shut down.

Lolohea grew enough that he signed with Oregon State out of high school as a three-star defensive end. After appearing in 40 games and making 22 starts over four seasons in Corvallis, he needed a new landing spot this offseason after head coach Jonathan Smith left to take the Michigan State job.

There was plenty of interest from the likes of Michigan State, USC, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State. However, a prior relationship with FSU general manager Darrick Yray — who was previously at Oregon State — and a FaceTime call with Mike Norvell helped convince Lolohea that FSU was the place he should spend his final season of collegiate eligibility.

"Really, it was the development part that I was looking for," Lolohea said. "I've got one shot, I'm going into my last year and after all the things that happened at Oregon State, I was looking for a place that was going to develop me in any way to the next level on and off the field. I think Florida State is the best fit for me."

This season at FSU will be the culmination of eight years of remarkable progress for Lolohea, who left his family at 16 to chase a dream and an education.

His family, he shared in his first interview at FSU, still has never seen him play a football game in person.

"It's been tough. My parents never left the island, they've never seen me play the game. They don't understand what football is," Lolohea said. "It's been tough, but I trained myself to not think about it too much. Now that I'm used to moving around, I left home when I was 16 and left my parents thousands of miles behind. Now, I'm getting to a point that I'm used to it already."

Lolohea worked some at linebacker and even tight end early in his football career. However, it was defensive end where he was most effective.

He arrived right as his freshman season was beginning in Hawaii, meaning he was thrown into the deep end of learning both the rules of football and the English language.

"I was 16 years old when I started learning about what football was. Football wasn't around me when I was little so the transition was hard but easy because I had played rugby so the physicality of the game was easy for me to transition," Lolohea recalls. "Learning the playbook, the rules, putting the helmets and shoulder pads on, that was the hardest part for me. But as I got used to it, now I love football."

It didn't happen immediately but by the time his sophomore season rolled around, Livai saw that his gut feeling about Lolohea was dead on.

"His sophomore year, I saw everything about him, his movement, his shape. His sophomore year, he could be an outside linebacker, dominant d-end. He could play anywhere, he had a nose for the ball," Livai said. "That's when I realized that he was unique. Plus the fact that he was a little taller than the rest of the boys. There are some things we can't teach like size."

For all these players he brings over, Livai finds them housing, gets them set up in school and finds tutoring for them -- even doing it himself if there's no other option.

"I was so proud of Sione for hanging in there, trying to meet the minimum of what was required to go D-I and to keep it up," Livai said.

Through his non-profit PASE organization, which is eligible for tax-deductible donations, Livai has brought almost 30 teenagers from Tonga over to the U.S. since 2015 and almost 100 total football prospects over that span when including Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

None have yet made to the NFL, but Lolohea is one of four currently playing FBS football along with brothers Jay Toia at UCLA and Soane Toia at San Jose State as well as Stanley Ta'ufo'ou at USC. These four could be the first PASE products to make the NFL, joining a growing number of people of Tongan heritage who are playing professional football.

It's part of the dream Livai envisioned when he launched PASE, looking to bolster a country that has a population of just over 100,000 people yet ranks 16th in the world rankings for men's rugby.

"We're a very proud people. Seeing that there's not a lot of us that get to play this sport, there's all the respect for all the people that went before me," Lolohea said. "It's a very proud thing to be able to play the game."

Another beneficiary of the PASE program didn't see his football career work out, but is set to graduate with an MBA in December.

"When I started my program, I did not promise that they're going to make it in the NFL, but I did promise a better education and a broader understanding of life," Livai said. "Anything with football was to help their academics, hopefully earning a degree if they don't make it to the NFL someday. That's how I did it."

After a slow start to his career at Oregon State, Lolohea came on strong the last two seasons. He had just eight tackles over 2020 and 2021 before recording 80 tackles, 14.5 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks in 2022 and 2023, with 11 quarterback hurries and four forced fumbles as well.

He was an honorable-mention All-Pac-12 defensive end in 2022 and got the bump up to second-team All-Pac-12 in 2023 after recording 8.5 tackles for loss, seven quarterback hurries and 43 total tackles.

While at OSU, Lolohea benefitted from a coach who spoke his language who helped him learn the playbook more easily. Now, with over eight years of learning football and the English language under his belt, he says he's more comfortable arriving at a new school and learning a new playbook.

He didn't know much about FSU's recent track record of defensive end transfer production before visiting the Seminoles during his portal recruitment. Once he arrived, talk of Jermaine Johnson and Jared Verse's impact and the belief that he could have a similar breakthrough in Tallahassee was a major selling point from FSU defensive ends coach John Papuchis.

"I didn't know all that, but when I took my visit, coach JP talked to me and showed me a lot of what he's done for those boys," Lolohea said. "He really developed them. They came here as two transfers and he really turned them into first-round picks. I think that's a big part of the reason why I came here is the development in that way...

"I want to improve on my pass-rush. Run defense, I'm alright, but the big thing I'm looking for is development as a pass-rusher."

Lolohea also isn't complaining about living in the South for the first time, a climate he considers much more familiar than many of the last few places in the U.S. he's lived in.

"On the West Coast, it's colder, especially in Corvallis. Down here in Tallahassee, it's nice and warm," Lolohea said. "I love the weather here. It almost reminds me of back home, back in the islands."

Livai, who was back in Tonga scouting some more potential PASE additions when he talked to the Osceola, is hopeful he can make it to see Lolohea play in a game this season at FSU.

He's also quite excited to see what is next for Lolohea, whether it's the NFL or a career in football or elsewhere. Because his journey has been pretty much exactly what Livai envisioned when he began this venture.

"There's not much back here (in Tonga) to get anything. There's no jobs, there's just nothing that can provide for family. So to have an opportunity to go to United States of America, land of opportunity, next to going to heaven, it is the next best thing for anybody from Tonga and from many countries in the world," Livai said. "To execute and do his best for whatever opportunity that he has, with the dream that he's chasing that someday he could get something finance-wise to help his family, whether with a chance in the NFL or a degree to get a job or to get something so that he can help his family back home."