LIHU‘E — The Kapa‘a Warriors sought redemption Saturday as the team hosted the Waimea Menehune at Vidinha Stadium. The last time these two squads met, it ended with a 14-7 Waimea win. Saturday would be a different story as the
LIHU‘E — The Kapa‘a Warriors sought redemption Saturday as the team hosted the Waimea Menehune at Vidinha Stadium. The last time these two squads met, it ended with a 14-7 Waimea win. Saturday would be a different story as the Warriors would find its running game as well as stop the run better than the team has in its last two games, which would propel the Warriors to a 14-3 win over Waimea.
Kapa‘a came out with the mind set that it would run the ball, in the last meeting the Warriors came up just shy of 50 yards of total rushing, as opposed to Saturday’s game where Kapa‘a put up 124 yards of total rushing, which would loosen up Waimea’s pass defense throughout the game.
Leevi Bethel would carry the majority of the workload on the ground for Kapa‘a as he finished with 84-yards rushing on 14 carries.
“We just wanted to establish the run,” Head Coach Keli‘i Morgado said. “It didn’t matter who it was, we needed to find that in order to open up our passing game, because our opponents took that away from us the last two games.”
The running game did indeed lead to a better passing attack as quarterback Fresno Masaniai had a solid game with 141-yards passing on 11 of 23 attempts with two touchdowns.
On the receiving end, both J.J Alonzo and Reece Hickse-Whetsel caught a touchdown pass from Masaniai.
Perhaps even more impressive than the Kapa‘a offensive attack was its defense. Although the defensive squad gave up a few lengthy runs, it never panicked holding the Waimea offense to just a Wyatt Taniguchi field goal for the game.
“I put it on the ‘O’ and ‘D’ line,” Morgado said. “They got dominated by both Waimea and Kaua‘i the last two games so it was up to them. If we were going to win, we had to win in the trenches and they responded.”
The Warriors defensive unit was led by Dustyn Desilva who racked up eight tackles, Rusty Ah Loo who had seven tackles and two sacks and Una Masaniai who anchored the defensive line.
Punter Turtle Kahaulua had a good day kicking the ball as he was able to twice pin the Menehune inside its own 20-yard line including one, which was inside its own 5-yard line.
Although the defense stepped up for Kapa‘a, the Menhune still did not abandon the running game and finished with solid numbers rushing the ball. Kyren Rapacon finished with 74 yards rushing on 18 carries and Isaac Fierro added and impressive clip of 64-yards on 9 carries
Quarterback Hazzard McDougall had 48-yards passing on 6 of 12 attempts and one interception, which was snatched by Kapa‘a’s Daniel Alonzo.
The Kapa‘a Warriors now head into its bye with a 2-2 record trailing the 3-1 Kaua‘i Red Raiders.
“I’m glad we have the bye,” said Morgado. “This is a tough league. It’s not ideal to be down, this is where we were last year, in a must win situation every week. We are here again. I suppose the silver lining is we have been here before.”
Kapa‘a will look to heal and rest over its bye week as it prepares for the Red Raiders on Oct. 20 at 3 p.m. in what could be a championship decisive game.
The Waimea Menhune fall to 1-3 and will not have time to rest to much as they ready themselves to take on Kaua‘i Saturday at Vidinha Stadium at 3 p.m.
In junior varsity action the Kapa‘a Warriors took down the Kaua‘i High School Red Raiders 20-7. The two squads will meet again at Vidinha Stadium on Saturday at noon.
