[ALL] Annoying Phone Code Puzzle in The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

I just wanna rant about the Phone Code Puzzle in the Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit.

I>! solved the combo lock puzzle which was the year the dad won the championship so at this point, I figured the code would be date related. I checked the locker and I saw numerous dates and I tried nearly every date and nearly every combination of the dates. Eventually I just gave up and looked it up.To my surprise, the answer was hawtdawgman in numpad format which is stupid because !<

!1. It's the dad's phone so that would not be the password !<

!2. Even if the dad would allow his kid to make up the password, he is very unlikely to have any experience with using a numpad.!<

!3. There was no hint that the password was anything other than a date.!<

Was there any hints that I missed?