Kamehameha plays 'Iolani for state girls basketball berth

Advertiser Staff

Moanalua's Menehune step up to bat for the first league baseball championship in the school's 30-year history while Kamehameha's Warriors fight for the chance to win their third straight state girls basketball championship in playoff games on O'ahu tonight.

Moanalua's baseball team (9-3), the post-strike surprise of the O'ahu Interscholastic Association, plays defending champion Kailua (10-2) at 7 at Hans L'Orange Field in Waipahu for the OIA championship.

Moanalua was only 3-2 before the public school teachers' strike interrupted the season for three weeks, but is a league-best 6-1 since games resumed May 1.

Kaiser (8-3-1) and Pearl City (7-4) vie for the OIA's third spot in this weekend's state tournament at 4:30 today on the same field.

The state baseball tournament, compacted from four days to two because of the strike, will be played on O'ahu Friday and Saturday.

Kamehameha's girls basketball team has lost only three games in the past three years — all to Punahou — yet the Warriors might not go to the state tournament they have won the past two years.

State tournaments were cut from 12 to eight teams in order to fit them into a shorter time frame forced by the teachers' strike. The private-school Interscholastic League of Honolulu usually sends three teams to the state tournament. This year it gets only two slots.

Kamehameha (12-2) plays 'Iolani (8-4) for that second spot tonight at 6 at McCabe Gym on the Chaminade-St. Louis campus. No matter who wins, a very good team will be ending its season tonight.

Also on tap today are the OIA tennis championships at 4 p.m. at the University of Hawai'i courts. Mililani's Krystal Hangai will play Farrington's Wailyn Leong for the girls singles title. Jeremy Young of Mililani will meet Anthony Iligan of Farrington for the boys singles crown.

Leong and Iligan were misidentified in yesterday's Advertiser.

The state tennis championships will start on Kaua'i on Friday with the finals at Punahou on Monday.

FOOTBALL

• Kealakehe hires Papali'i: Sam Papali'i, a successful college assistant football coach for 19 years, has been appointed head coach at Kealakehe, the four-year-old school in Kona that Big Island observers have called the next power in Hawai'i public-school sports.

"I'm excited to be in a program that is a sleeping giant," Papali'i said. "Kealakehe is basically a reflection of all the different ethnic groups in Hawai'i. There is a melting pot of students on that campus, more so than most campuses I've been to."

Papali'i noted that Kealakehe had a winning record, 5-4, last fall in its third season of varsity football. It is the fastest growing school in the state and already has the third largest enrollment on the Big Island with 1,475, including 807 boys.

Papali'i, a 1975 St. Louis School graduate, moved back to Hawai'i in 1998 after the entire UNLV staff he was part of was fired and John Robinson was hired as head coach.

He has been working as a mental health counselor in Kona for a company contracted by the state.

After beginning his coaching career at De Anza community college in Northern California from 1980-82, he became an assistant at University of Hawai'i from 1983-86. He went to Arizona with Dick Tomey from 1987-89, then was assistant head coach to Ron McBride at Utah from 1990-93.

He came home in 1993 when his father was terminally ill, then returned to college coaching from 1994-96 at Iowa State. He moved "closer to home" to UNLV in 1997-98.

TRACK

• St. Anthony, Baldwin win: St. Anthony's boys prevented a Baldwin sweep Saturday night in the Maui Interscholastic League track and field championships.

Coach Rudy Huber's Trojan boys, led by Roland Sumabat's 14-foot pole vault and their relay teams, scored 83 points to Baldwin's 70.

Baldwin's girls scored 104 1/2 points, more than the second-place teams, King Kekaulike and Lahainaluna, combined. The two schools each had 50.

Seabury Hall freshman Tia Ferguson set three Maui meet records — finishing the preliminaries of 800-meter run in 2:24.01, and winning the 1,500 in 4:56.89 and 3,000 in 10:43.87. She set the 800 mark Friday during the trials, but did not run the event in the finals.

GETTING IT STRAIGHT

• Vikings in '99: Hilo High won the state high school girls golf championship in 1999. Another team was credited in Sunday's account of this year's state tournament.

• OIA triple jump: Leilehua junior Bryan Ford's winning boys triple jump in the O'ahu Interscholastic Association championships Saturday was 42 feet, 10fl inches. A longer jump was inadvertently reported in meet results in Sunday's Advertiser.