Radford Dudoit’s final days were filled with Aloha
Kalani High School head football coach Radford Dudoit died on Feb. 1 following complications from heart surgery. Radford Dudoit, the Hawaii sports community's head coach at Kalani High School, passed away on February 1 at the age of 46. He was diagnosed with complications from heart surgery in June 2023 that led to the amputation of both of his feet and his left hand due to complications from the surgery. Despite returning home from six and a half months away, Dududit was home for approximately two weeks and an infection caused him to get readmitted to another ICU at Queen's Hospital. His wife, Zabrina, remained committed to his recovery and kept him motivated throughout the fall. Despite a successful debut season in 2022, he was unable to build on this mark.
Published : 4 weeks ago by Christian Shimabuku in Sports
On the personal table of Radford Dudoit in his Kaimuki home sits his phone, wallet, keys, a television remote, and a large box of tissues.
It’s early January, and Dudoit has been home for less than a week. His close friends and family call him by his middle name, Ka’imi, but in the Hawaii sports community, he’s known as Radford Dudoit: Kalani High School football head coach.
Dudoit went 2-6 in his debut season at the helm in 2022. He was eager to build on that mark in 2023, but he never got the opportunity to do so.
Dudoit had vivid memories of June 15, 2023 — his life was never the same after that. Over the course of an hour and a half conversation, Dudoit recalled the series of events that led to the amputation of both of his feet and his left hand due to complications from heart surgery, a process that included an emergency trip to Stanford and an extended stay at Queen’s Hospital. He was down to one hand and was even missing his right middle finger and half of his ring finger.
Family, friends and football kept Dudoit motivated during the fall. Returning home presented its clear challenges, as Dudoit needed assistance for tasks such as getting out of bed and using the bathroom, but his wife, Zabrina Kama-Dudoit, was wholeheartedly committed to every part that came with it.
After being away for six and a half months, Dudoit was home for approximately two weeks. An additional infection caused him to get readmitted to another ICU at Queen’s. Doctors made multiple attempts to save Dudoit’s life, including the amputation his right hand. On Feb. 1, Dudoit passed away. He was 46.
In January, Dudoit was asked to recall the events of June 15, 2023. Fall camp was around the corner for the Falcons, but Dudoit needed heart surgery to repair an enlarged aortic valve.
The plan was to miss a handful of weeks at most. For the time being, 24-year-old assistant coach Quinn Griffiths was to serve as the team’s interim head coach until Dudoit made his eventual return, except it never came.
After Dudoit entered the operating room at 7 a.m., his wife was told the surgery would last nine to ten hours.
“We took him in at 5 a.m., they prepped him, 7 a.m. they got him to the operating room. They said basically by 4, 5 o’clock, June 15, he should’ve been out by then,” Zabrina told KHON2. “We didn’t hear anything until maybe 6 o’clock that night. They were telling us he’s still going to be in there, there was some kind of complication. Every hour until 6 o’clock to probably 9, I kept calling to check up on him to see what’s going on. Finally one of the doctors came out and said his lungs collapsed and asked if he had pneumonia in the past. I remembered in the past, he had bronchitis. He had to go in for another type of surgery. We didn’t get to see him until almost a quarter to 1 in the morning.
“When I walked in, he was hooked up with so many machines and they were basically saying the right side of his heart wasn’t working as much as it should have been. It was just one thing after another, after another, after another. He went in for a normal procedure and he’s coming out and his right valve is not working, then eventually his left valve.”
Dudoit was eventually flown to Stanford Medical Center on an emergency basis for 40 days. He didn’t wake up until July.
“I don’t remember anything. All I went by was what other people were telling me,” Dudoit told KHON2 in January. “By then, my hands were black, my feet were black. That was at Stanford Hospital in California. I was just like, ‘What am I doing here?’ My wife kind of had to tell me everything that had happened, what was going on, stuff like that. At first it was a little upsetting, but then after a while I just felt like I had to be strong for everybody. I know my wife was upset, so I didn’t just want to add to that. I tried to make jokes out of things, joke around.
“They amputated both legs. I couldn’t even turn. I couldn’t drink water for almost a month. They would give me ice chips, things like that. I kept saying, ‘Can I get water?’ But they said they couldn’t give me liquids. They were feeding me through those nose tubes.”
Zabrina stayed with Radford for all 40 days, using points for hotel stays and washing her clothes at a nearby Ronald McDonald House.
“I just kept saying we’re not pulling nothing, we’re not pulling no plugs. Everything shuts down, his brain, his liver, kidney, everything else, then that’s when we’ll make that decision. For me, I was planning things daily. It wasn’t about what’s gonna happen in five days or in a week. Basically, I was falling apart,” Zabrina said. “It got to a point where he started to have heart arrhythmias, that was added to it. He was shutting down. Basically, we had all of that, so much happening that almost three weeks of him being in the hospital at Queen’s that his kidney had shut down.”
Because he had yet to regain consciousness, Dudoit said he did not remember the trip to California, where he was flown privately on a gurney.
“I visited him at Stanford, they started doing the tests and started doing the CT scans. They found out he has so much blood clots that they couldn’t do the procedure we flew up for. It was just a roller coaster,” Zabrina said. “The day after, we did a PET scan, they found fungus in his system, which was more dangerous for him to do the procedure. It was basically taking care of all his wounds that he had from Queen’s hospital. It was a lot of crying, a lot of screaming.”
When Dudoit awoke, each day provided its obstacles. The balance between coping with what he had lost and what he was trying to regain proved to be a formidable test.
“Because of my wounds and stuff, they had to change dressings and all that. I had all these IVs stuck on me. It was really painful, basically,” he recalled. “Even in the middle of the night, they would wake me up because they had to change me and turn me and stuff like that. It was kind of rough in the beginning.”
One of Dudoit’s first thoughts upon awakening was his team back home.
“My wife said the first people I asked to call was my football coaches. I woke up in July thinking It was August and we were starting already,” Dudoit recalled with a chuckle. “I was asking for them and wanted to talk about what was going on in the season, the games.”
Following his 40 days at Stanford, Dudoit was transported back to Oahu and returned to Queen’s. With a long road of recovery and rehabilitation in front of him, Dudoit couldn’t help himself. He constantly thought of his team and eagerly awaited their televised games.
Early on in his Kalani tenure, Dudoit instituted a rule where players could only wear white socks and white undershirts. He was irate to see multiple players on his screen wearing black and made calls to his assistant coaches from his hospital bed.
In 2023, the Falcons went 4-4 under Griffiths, which included a 3-0 start. Griffiths, who was a substitute teacher at the school, put off pursuing his education degree for a semester in order to be with the team.
“I think we always put ourselves in a good position to win. Every game we were in it at one point. A lot of those games, it didn’t go in our favor but there’s only one winner and one loser, right? I think we stayed competitive and we gave our best and I just hope we made Radford proud,” Griffiths said. “He says we did, but a lot was about doing him proud, doing the right thing for him and being competitors, and I think the kids really bought in and tried their best and gave it their all, and that’s all you can ask for.”
Dudoit is an open book and straight shooter, describing with a distinct pidgin accent how “flaky” even family members can be at times. Dudoit holds back tears throughout the conversation, but the tears start to flow when he describes his support system, consisting mostly of Zabrina, his grandmother, and his close friend Ryan Oda and Oda’s father, Keith.
“I know it affected (Zabrina) mentally as well. There was times where I had to be positive for her, and she had to be positive for me, because there’s a lot of times where I just wanted to quit and she talked to me and said I can’t quit, I have to keep going,” Dudoit recalled. “I just went from there.”
Dudoit’s eyes continue to pour when he mentions Justin Botelho, the younger brother of Notre Dame’s Jordan Botelho. Justin Botelho tried out as a wide receiver as an underclassman, but Dudoit saw the potential in him to be an outside linebacker, just like Jordan.
As a senior in 2023, he was named ScoringLive’s Division II OIA Defensive Player of the Year. Dudoit told him to believe in himself and believe he can do it. Upon learning of his award, Botelho sent him a text and thanked him for everything he’s done for him.
“You never really realize how much of an effect you have on these kids until it just comes back to you and they say something,” Dudoit said.
Beyond the accolades, Dudoit also expressed pride in senior Isaac Ng, a player on the Kalani roster who overcame a cancer diagnosis during the season.
“Radford could probably write a dissertation about every kid and why he cared,” Ryan Oda said. “I’m still getting messages from former players saying how they miss coach Radford. Even though he didn’t graduate from Kalani, he was a Kalani Falcon through and through.”
Dudoit doesn’t shy away from talking about his prep days, which included three years of bad grades at Mid-Pacific and one year of no football at Kailua because of it.
“When I would see him talk, I’d see a guy that was telling the kids ‘Don’t make the same mistakes I did. I made those mistakes for you.’ He was very open, very passionate about opening up about his own transgressions in order to help the youth and that’s something I really appreciate,” Oda said of Dudoit. “He showed his vulnerabilities. He was just an all-around good person.”
Said Dudoit: “That was one of my motivations — to be on the sideline with the players and things like that. I love coaching and I love helping kids, basically. For me, when I was growing up, I never had help. If I had someone like me helping, I might have done better.”
Following his graduation in 1995, Dudoit entered the workforce immediately and moved to Oregon, where his first son was born. In total, Dudoit is survived by four of his own children and two grandchildren, as well as two stepdaughters and two step-grandchildren.
Zabrina and Radford Dudoit met at a 10-year Kailua High School reunion after Radford moved back home. Zabrina, who works for Southwest Airlines, dedicated nearly all of her free time towards Radford’s healing process.
“My wife, she’s been my biggest supporter. It’s a learning experience and I have to start holding my end of the bargain and helping her out more, things like that. But she’s been next to me the whole time, from June 15 all the way until now,” Dudoit said in January. “She’s the only one that’s been every day at the hospital for all that time. She’s been my biggest supporter.”
When Dudoit couldn’t be on the sidelines in 2023, it was Zabrina who was FaceTiming her husband during games.
“Usually I’m not that involved in football season like how I was this year. I wanted to be representing Radford at football games. One of the games, they told me I could go on the field with them and be on the sidelines with the coaches,” she said. “They had a pep rally and assembly, I walked into the locker room and the football boys went to their assembly and I talked to them and told them coach Radford loves you guys, he loves you guys and wishes he was here. We tried our best to get him to be out here for homecoming but because of all his wounds, they weren’t able to let him.”
She recalls getting emotional before one of the team’s games because of the reception she received, a clear sign of how much Dudoit was loved.
“The amount of people that came out and helped him, it was just crazy,” Zabrina said. “Even coaches from other high schools were reaching out, people from the mainland that he coached before with. It was crazy just to know how many people love him from here, to the neighbor islands, to the mainland. It really touched me.”
Ask Oda about Dudoit, and he’ll speak delicately but assuredly about his close friend.
“My son turns 4, he called him ‘Uncle Radford.’ Uncle Radford was just an unbelievably courageous individual. Rose to the occasion, never wavered in the face of adversity. Took every day, as difficult as it was, and he just kept pushing forward,” Oda said. “So courageous, extremely tough and was just a loving individual. Loved his family, loved his wife, Zabrina, loved his kids and his grandkids, and he definitely loved the kids that he coached. Not just Kalani, but also in Oregon, everything else. It’s sad that he’s not here but the memories are always gonna be fresh. That’s something I’m always gonna hold on to.
“He never once was a victim. He never said ‘woe is me,’ he was just so positive. I think a lot of people in that situation would feel sad and down and possibly not even want to live. But Radford never was the victim. He was so strong and so courageous. He always just said, ‘I’ll figure it out.’ I just aspire to have that type of courage and that kind of grit.”
Oda recalls a time where Dudoit reached out for advice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dudoit went on to chase his true passion: Football. At Kalani, he was an associate athletics director on top of his duties as a football coach, where he worked 12-hour days. Oda served as his assistant head coach, offensive line coach and chief of staff, floating during spring and fall ball while helping with fundraising and staff management.
“He had a great career with Coca-Cola. He called me and said, ‘I just got offered a job from a competitor company that’s gonna pay me more, or I can take this offer from Kalani, which is gonna be a fraction of my current pay but try to pursue my dream as a coach,” Oda said. “We talked about it and I basically said, ‘Hey, if this is your dream, you have to pursue it.’ It’s a tough decision. You should include Zabrina in it and your kids. He decided to pursue what he ultimately wanted to do, which was be a head coach. I think a guy that just puts it all on the line, you have to appreciate he walks his talk, you know? He’s not just telling the kids ‘pursue your dreams,’ it’s something he went through himself.”
Among Dudoit’s prized possessions was a signed football by members of the University of Hawaii coaching staff. The support he received from a plethora of other coaches across the state served as additional motivation.
“Shoot, I’ve never even met some of these coaches,” Dudoit had said. “For me, it felt good knowing that I had a lot of support.”
In his two weeks at home, Dudoit was proactive despite his limitations. He had scheduled preseason games against Waiakea and ‘Iolani. He was finalizing the hires of local legends Cal and Ron Lee on his staff. He was also checking the progress of Kalani’s new field, which is set to open in July but won’t be able to host games.
Since Dudoit’s death, Kalani hired Pohai Lee as the school’s new football coach. Lee is the son of former Hawaii offensive coordinator Tommy Lee, as well as the nephew of Ron and Cal.
In spite of the fact that he didn’t graduate from a college himself, Dudoit prided himself on helping as many Kalani students with the college application process as possible, which included identifying a good fit and obtaining financial aid.
“Kalani, we try to make it a family people want to be a part of,” he said. “It’s more than just winning games. Learning how to treat each other, stuff like that. I always tell my players winning and losing is not a big thing to me. My big thing is making sure they grow into good young men, basically.
“I’m teaching them to be good people and protect people that can’t protect themselves.”
Dudoit pointed to Rob Mendez, an ESPY-winning high school football coach in California born without arms and legs, as a direct inspiration. Dudoit was poised to roam the sidelines during the fall despite being a triple amputee, and hoped to serve as an inspiration for decades to come, mentioning the possibility of getting prosthetics.
Dudoit’s return home was also a necessary time to reflect on the small victories in his life. Done were the days of speech therapy and learning to consume the most basic human essential.
“When I first drank water again, it just felt really good,” he recalled.
It wasn’t until Dec. 13 – Radford and Zabrina’s anniversary – that Radford was allowed outside at the hospital.
“We went outside and it was raining. Smelling the rain, smelling the trees and everything, that’s the little things you take for granted in life. When it rains, everybody’s just like, ‘Oh, I can’t do anything, it’s raining.’ For me, it was like, this is awesome just to be outside for the first time in six months. We had gone down to the dining room to go eat. We ate, came back up and got locked out of the hospital,” Radford had recalled with a soulful laugh.
“Just the little things. Being outside, smelling the rain, smelling the plants, things like that. That’s the little things you take for granted. You don’t realize it until it’s taken away from you for so long. The only other time I was outside that I remember is when they flew me back to Hawaii. But with that, I was on a gurney and I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t get to see nothing but that was really nice.”
Although adjusting to his new life wasn’t always smooth, Dudoit tried to maximize his days back at home with Zabrina by his side. He returned on Dec. 30, 2023, just in time to make 2024 his year of renewal and hope.
“Look for the positives, find something that will motivate you to keep you going,” he’d said. “Because if you don’t, you might just become angry and resentful and that’s not good.”
On Jan. 15, Dudoit was readmitted to the hospital. The Thursday before he died, his right hand was amputated with the belief that an infection could have spread to it. He became a quadruple amputee. A return to coaching remained a goal of his.
“S— happens,” Zabrina and Ryan both recall Radford saying upon learning of his final amputation.
This time around, things felt different. Despite his determination, Zabrina also noticed a sense of despondence in her husband.
“I kind of felt in my heart something was wrong,” she said. “He wasn’t as strong as he was before in July.”
Zabrina admits she’ll never stop missing Radford, but she finds comfort in the fact that he treated her children like his own. She even sees a part Radford in her youngest daughter, Zienna, who is a senior at Kalani.
“Her being strong for me keeps me going because she reminds me of him,” Zabrina said. “I still have a part of him with me and I have a daughter who acts just like him.”
A GoFundMe has been arranged for Radford Dudoit. His celebration of life, also organized by Zabrina, will take place at Kalani High School on April 21 from noon to 3 p.m.
When asked about what made Zabrina and her husband so close, she pointed to the fact that they have the same birth year and were born eight days apart in October, making them libras. They balance each other out, Zabrina says.
Zabrina told Radford she’d always there for him. It’s a promise she kept to the very end.
“The night before his (June) surgery, he was worried about bills and rent and everything and he was leaving to go to a football practice,” she said. “I looked at him before he walked out and said, ‘Do not stress about it. I got you no matter what.’”