The last sports review for Kahuku High’s 2006-07 school yearSpring rains cooled things off and turned the Kahuku High field and track just muddy enough to make the annual “red and white” scrimmage on June 5th seem almost like fall football. Indeed, with over 200 Kahuku Red Raiders suited up, this last official team activity of the school year gave the modest crowd of faithful fans a good football fix.

Of course, almost all of the sophomores will be playing JV when the regular season starts, while some of the potential starters were standing on the sidelines, wondering whether they would be heading to summer school or their grades would be good enough to get them back on the field.

Head football coach Reggie Torres was wondering the same thing before the scrimmage: “After the report cards are in, I’ll be happier. The scrimmage gives us a good chance to see some of the players in action we don’t normally get to see too much.”

Focusing on quarterbacks, coach Torres said, “We have Nalu Carvalho coming back, but sophomore Jray Galea‘i [a transfer student from Timpview, Utah, whose family is originally from Laie] has also impressed me. He has a good attitude.”

Others also had a variety of opinions about how well the defending state champions will do in the upcoming season. One predicted some of those potential starters might continue to have academic challenges. Another said, “Last year was good, but with all the graduations we had, plus we’re breaking in a new quarterback, I have no idea.”

Kahuku Athletic Director Joe Whitford noted that over 300 kids are planning to attend Education 1st’s football camp in July, “including a lot of ours. Some will be going to the mainland, and some will be working on academics.”

In other Kahuku sports reports:

Water Polo

The Kahuku girls won their fifth consecutive OIA championship handily. “After five years of OIA competition, we haven’t lost yet,” Whitford said, “but we had to be satisfied with second place in the state following an 11–4 loss to ‘Iolani in finals on May 12th.

“The gap with the perennially powerful ILH teams is kind of far apart. A lot of the girls in private school swim competitively, ” he continued. “Our girls were down 5–4 at half-time, and just kind of ran out of gas; but we’ve got a lot of them returning next year, so it looks favorable again.”

He added some of the Kahuku girls will be play club water polo this summer. “They have a tournament on Maui. My daughter, Makana Whitford, will be their coach. She has about 40–50 kids this summer.”

Track and Field

“We qualified a lot of kids to go to state, after winning the boys OIA East championship,” Whitford said. “Our best performer was Paipai Falemalu, but we didn’t do as well as we thought.” He added, for example, we didn’t have any individual wins this year.

Judo

“Our girls finished third place in the state. We only lost the championship by three points,” Whitford said. “It went down to the wire.”

For the boys, Richard Torres won individual gold in the 161-pound class. The boys team took fourth place.

Whitford also singled out the performances of Danica Auna, Kala‘e Johnson, Ciennah Hee and Amanda Soliai. “All these girls are also coming back, so look for good things next year in girls wrestling and judo.”

Free Las Vegas trip for two

To promote the upcoming game with Bingham High in Cedar City, Utah, on September 1, Whitford said students buy their activity passes on July 21–23 in the cafeteria during their schedule pick-ups, “they will be entered in a drawing to travel with the team to watch the game.

“We’ll provide two free round-trip tickets to Las Vegas, hotel accommodations and game tickets,” he said.

Schedule/sports changes

Whitford reported that the Hawaii High School Athletics Association (HHSAA) are working out schedule changes, and have already decided that:

Boys volleyball will be in the spring next school year.

  • “We’re going to add a third girls volleyball team next year for grades 9–12. That’s going to be called the ‘blue league,’ so more girls will be able to participate. We look forward to that,” he said.
  • JV softball will be in the fall.
  • “Basketball is going to be a scheduling nightmare in the winter,” Whitford said of the decision to have both the girls and boys team playing at the same time. “I don’t know how we’re going to work out practices yet, so it will be exciting.”
  • Whitford added he “expected some battles” at the HHSAA meetings on the Big Island. “The other leagues want better representation in state championship games, but their leagues are smaller, with only four and five teams. They want 40% of them to go to state, which doesn’t make sense. You have to go by how many teams there are per league, and then take a percentage of each to make it fair.”
  • Asked about surfing, Whitford said it is “not an official OIA sport yet. For example, we haven’t resolved liability and practice site issues. We can’t kick people out of a site. Kahuku is for it. Don’t get me wrong. Surfing is part of our culture here, but the rest of the league is not prepared to go forward. In the meantime, we’ll keep surfing on the club level.”
  • “Sports around here do not go to sleep over the summer,” Whitford said. “A lot of our kids will be involved in club activities and different camps. “There will be a lot of busy kids, but none of these activities come under Kahuku High or the OIA.”
  • “Our first official game will be either August 18th or 19th against St. Louis in the Stadium. We don’t know which one. We’ll also be scrimmaging Kamehameha there, but that date hasn’t been set either.”