Kealakehe's Bento joins Missouri Valley

By Dennis Anderson
Advertiser Staff Writer

Kana Bento, a first-team all-state boys volleyball player last year for Kealakehe High on the Big Island, makes it a Gang of Seven from Hawai'i on Missouri Valley College's first men's volleyball team.

Bento, a 6-foot-5 middle blocker/outside hitter, is the third all-state player from Hawai'i to enroll at NAIA Missouri Valley. The others are Rickey Estrada and David Hoke, both of Kamehameha.

All seven Hawai'i players will receive need-based financial aid for volleyball, said coach Ed Johnson, who has 25 players on his roster.

Also

• Missouri Valley softball coach Nora May has signed honorable mention all-state catcher Cassie Chun-Ming of Kaiser and first baseman Ashley Tone of Maui High. Chun-Ming was a three-time OIA East all-star.

Sophomore second baseman Sheri Yoshino (McKinley '00 of Kane'ohe) won honorable mention Heart of America Conference last season for Missouri Valley, which fell one game short of reaching the NAIA world series.

• Michael Garcia, who earned OIA East all-star recognition in football, basketball and baseball at Kalaheo High, is playing fall baseball at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, R.I.

Less than two days after completing "three weeks of hell" in the prep school's 16 1/2-hours per day "Indoc" (indoctrination) program, Garcia started fall practice on Aug. 12. Garcia plans to transfer to the U.S. Naval Academy next year.

• Garrett Danner (Kapa'a), a Kaua'i league all-star in basketball, volleyball, and tennis, has chosen to pursue basketball at Midland Lutheran in Nebraska, where his sister Jordyn Danner, Kaua'i's girls Player of the Year in 2000 for Kapa'a, has two letters in women's basketball and is "an extremely skilled shooter," coach Joanne Bracker said.

• Heavy-hitting second baseman Aaron Fuller (Kamehameha), who was chosen to the all-tournament team of the state high school championships, has accepted a talent award at Graceland (Iowa).

• Chris Hoe (Mid-Pacific) has received basketball and academic grants from Concordia in Portland, Ore. Hoe averaged 13.1 points per game, fourth best in the ILH last season.

• Noa Ching, breaststroker on Punahou's state runner-up medley relay team, will swim at Puget Sound (Wash.), where coach Chris Myhre, a former University of Hawai'i swimmer, says Ching "may be a diamond in the rough."

• Katherine Krochina (Kealakehe), a 4.0 student and All-Big Island soccer player, will walk-on at the University of San Diego

• The name of basketball player Heather Gonsalves (Kalaheo '01) was misspelled in early editions last Wednesday. Gonsalves has transferred from Chicago State to Eastern Arizona Junior College.