• One more champion to go! One more champion to go! By Duane Shimogawa Jr. – The Garden Island Time flies when you’re having fun and for most KIF seniors, it’s the last time they’ll play competitive sports and put
• One more champion to go!
One more champion to go!
By Duane Shimogawa Jr. – The Garden Island
Time flies when you’re having fun and for most KIF seniors, it’s the last time they’ll play competitive sports and put on the green, red, blue, yellow, or purple. But even for the minority of athletes who will go on to play at the next level, it will be the last time that they will be able to stake the claim of being a big fish in a small pond.
The 2004-2005 KIF season is rapidly dwindling away and just one championship remains to be determined. The girls’ basketball title game is the last significant regular season event of the year.
With just one more contest on the regular season schedule before the big championship game, both the Red Raiders and the Menehune look ready for the duel, which will punch the final ticket to a state tournament this season. Parity is the name of the game in KIF girls’ basketball this year and we’ve been treated to some of the best finishes in recent memory.
From Moani Durant’s final free-throw make with no time on the clock against Kaua‘i in the first round, which catapulted the Menehune to the initial round title, to Rachel Taira’s buzzer-beating three-pointer, which tied the Warriors and enabled Kaua‘i to clinch the second round crown, we’ve been blessed with amazing, heart-stopping action. All three teams deserve a piece of the title, but then again, this is sports and there have to be winners and losers. However in this race, all three teams, who are as young as they’ve ever been, will utilize the experience they picked up this season and use it for future reference, which will make the coming years some of the best basketball this island will ever see in the girls’ basketball scene.
On the diamond, where youth also makes up most of the three teams, the “X-Factor,” Kirby Yates, along with sidekick Shannon Oketani, the only two seniors on the Kaua‘i roster, may have shown why it’s so important to have great senior leadership. Red Raider head coach Hank Ibia Jr., has said that he’s lucky to have the caliber of player that Yates is and that if the other two teams could have him on their rosters, they’d take him in a heart beat.
The KIF champions, who finished with an 11-1 mark, were hardly challenged throughout the season, which will hurt them, but losing to the Menehune on Saturday in game two of the doubleheader, could turn out to be a huge factor, if Kaua‘i wanted a seed at states.
Ibia Jr., mentioned after capturing the first round title, that his team needed to run to table in order to just be in the hunt for a seed at the next level.
Speaking of seeds, Kaua‘i’s Jordan Kukino and Kula’s Alex Latif and Kyle Barrett should attain seeds at the state tennis championships.
Last year, both Kukino and the duo of Latif and Barrett, both were seeded in their respective brackets and they took care of business in the KIF championships. Kukino narrowly defeated Island School’s Justin Vea and Latif and Barrett overpowered Kaua‘i’s James Odan and Chad Naganuma. In 2000, Kaua‘i’s Brad Lum-Tucker won it all in boys’ singles and remains the only KIF tennis player to win a state title.
Red Raider senior Alex Sirois, the KIF girls’ singles champion, is a longshot for a seed, but she should definitely be rewarded for the way she dominated the Kaua‘i scene.
The defending state champion Kaua‘i High School girls and boys golf squads are right on cue once again, for another run at a state title, but this time, they’ll have to do it off-island on Maui. The KIF track and field championships ended with a bang on Friday. Kaua‘i individuals should bring home the hardware and represent the island with state championships in various events.
And then there were just four state tournaments and one KIF title game to go, but congratulations to the class of 2005 for another season to remember!
