Okamoto awarded conference honors

The Big West Conference announced its 2015 Scholar Athletes of the Year and one of Kauai’s own is on the list.

Kapaa High School alumnus Chas Okamoto was named University of Hawaii’s Male Scholar Athlete of the Year.

Okamoto graduated from Kapaa High in 2011 and was a four-time Kauai Interscholastic Federation boys singles tennis champion. He was also an individual state winner his senior year.

At UH, he was a two-time All-Big West Conference honoree in singles, and he helped the Rainbow Warriors win a conference regular season championship in his final year.

Also, he coached the Guam National Tennis Team in the Pacific Games and the North Pacific Regional Tennis Team at the Pacific Oceania Junior Championship during the summer of 2015.

Okamoto graduated Summa Cum Laude in December with a degree in civil engineering. He now works for the Kiewit Corporation in Omaha, Nebraska.

Okamoto couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

UH senior Olivia Magill is the school’s Female Scholar Athlete of the Year. She’s a middle blocker for the Rainbow Wahine volleyball team, was a two-time All-Big West Conference honoree and was named the Big West Defensive Player of the Week in October.

Magill, from Shoreline, Washington, led the conference in blocks and hitting percentage in 2015 and helped the team reach the Elite Eight of the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball tournament.

She’s a communications major and is interning with UH sports media relations office.

Each of the nine institutions in the Big West Conference — Cal Poly, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Northridge, Long Beach State, California-Davis, California-Irvine, California-Riverside, California-Santa Barbara and Hawaii — selected its own honorees. A banquet will be held Thursday in Anaheim, California.

UH Athletics and the Big West Conference contributed to this story.