HONOLULU – Hawaii will begin spring football practice on
schedule Thursday even though head coach June Jones remains
hospitalized with serious injuries received in a traffic accident.
Athletics director Hugh Yoshida said he considered postponing or
canceling the start of the monthlong spring drills after Jones'
one-car crash Thursday morning. But he decided to go ahead with the
spring practice when Jones' condition was upgraded from "critical
but stable" to "guarded" Friday morning.
|  | | Honolulu police look over what's left of the car that was driven by Hawaii football coach June Jones. |
Associate head coach George Lumpkin will run the team, Yoshida
said. Jones and his staff had plotted the agenda before the
accident, he said.
Doctors said Saturday that Jones' vital signs remain stable and
he continues to move his extremities and responds to the doctors'
requests.
They also say lung and chest x-rays are clear, his abdomen is
fine and his pulses are normal. Jones is aware he is in the
hospital, according to doctors.
He remains in guarded condition, and is expected to be
hospitalized for several weeks.
A breathing tube was removed Saturday, allowing Jones to breathe
on his own, doctors said. The tube had prevented Jones from
speaking, so he hadn't been able to explain what caused his 1999
Lincoln Town Car to veer off the H-1 Freeway near Honolulu
International Airport and crash into a concrete pillar supporting
an overpass.
Jones was not wearing a seat belt, and the state Department of
Transportation plans to make him a "poster boy" for seat belt
use, according to spokeswoman Marilyn Kali.
Transportation officials don't expect him to hesitate because of
his past willingness to lend his name to good causes, Kali said.
Oahu resident Laureano Sabado Jr. told KGMB-TV in Honolulu on
Friday that he was driving alongside Jones and recognized the coach
just before the crash. Sabado said he saw Jones take off his seat
belt and reach toward the passenger side of the front seat just
before the car veered off the road and into the pillar.
Dr. Michael Dang, who performed one of two two-hour operations
on Jones on Thursday, said the coach was lucky that a tear in his
aorta -- the heart vessel supplies blood to the body's organs -- did
not bleed more freely.
"It was well-contained and probably kept him alive until at
least he got into the operating room," Dang said.
Abdominal and chest bleeding has stopped and Jones' blood
pressure is stable, trauma surgeon Dr. Neil Fergusson said Friday.
He said a CT scan showed no brain damage, and no further surgeries
are anticipated.
Jones, 48, directed the biggest one-year turnaround in NCAA
history.
He took over a Hawaii program that went 0-12 under Fred vonAppen
in 1998. In his first season, the Warriors were 9-3 and won the
Oahu Bowl. Even as the Warriors slipped to 3-9 last year, fans
stood by Jones' side.
Jones turned down a multimillion-dollar contract to continue
coaching the San Diego Chargers to take the coaching job at Hawaii.
He was a quarterback for the school in the early 1970s. He was head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 1994 to 1996
before serving as interim head coach for the Chargers in 1998.
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