Baseball
Warriors walk-off with 8-7 win over Buffanblu


 



WAIPIO — Will Young's two-out, bases-clearing double completed a seventh-inning rally to give Kamehameha an 8-7 win over Punahou in walk-off fashion Thursday afternoon.

It was the second time in three days that the fourth-ranked Warriors (7-4-2) defeated the Buffanblu (2-10-1). They have now won their last four games, including an 11-0 victory over Punahou Tuesday.

Punahou broke a 4-4 tie with three runs in the top of the sixth. The Buffanblu took the 7-4 lead into the bottom of the seventh, but allowed eight Warriors to come to the plate in the inning. James DeJesus started the rally with a single to left field. Codie Paiva and Makana Arakaki then drew back-to-back walks to load the bases for Ethan Rosehill, who reached on an error. That allowed DeJesus to score from third and kept the bags full for Young, who drove the second pitch he saw from Buffanblu reliever Josh Winkler to deep left.

"It was a new pitcher so I knew that he would be throwing a lot of fastballs early, so I took one and I knew the second one was coming so I just sat back and hit it," Young said. "To hit that double really made me feel good because I wanted to do it for my team and luckily I did."

Paiva, Makoa Mau — who was pinch running for Arakaki — and Rosehill all scored on the play as their teammates anxiously awaited them at home plate.

"You take Will, a guy who struggled all game — I mean, he struggled on the field, he struggled at the plate — but we talked about that," Kamehameha coach Billy Pieper said. "We talked about flushing mistakes, flushing bad performances and he did that and came up and clutched-up and got that hit, so good for him. Good for him that he believes us now that you never give up, you always trust the process, you control what you can control, so I'm proud of Will."

After the celebration subsided, however, Pieper gave his squad an earful for a less-than-stellar start to the game. Punahou took an early lead on an RBI-single to right by Bo Coolen, who batted 3 for 4 with three RBIs.

"We came out flat, it didn't look good. We came out ugly today," Pieper said. "We came out flat in the beginning, their energy level was low, but they found a way to win and a win is win and it's going to build momentum going into next week and hopefully it continues into the tournament."

Kamehameha tied it in the bottom of the second when Arakaki — who led off the inning with a double to center — scored from third on a double steal and took its first lead two batters later when Kahoea came home after a Kody Cacal single.

"We didn't come out with our best today and we all know that, but we just had to work hard, get into the mindset that we're in a big game and luckily we were all able to get our minds right and flip the switch at the right time that we needed to," Young said.

Punahou reclaimed the lead with three runs in the fifth inning. Beau Branton and Coolen had RBI basehits in the inning, but Kamehameha answered with two runs in the bottom half of the inning to tie it.

Rosehill, Young and Cacal each had two hits to pace the Warriors' offense. Keenan Lum started the game on the mound for Kamehameha and lasted 4 1/3 innings before giving way to Ladd AhChoy, who pitched 1 2/3 innings. Ulu Farm was the winning pitcher after working a scoreless seventh inning.

The Buffanblu erupted for 13 hits after being held to just five combined in their last two games. Cole Kanazawa, Aaron Fong and KJ Harrison had two hits apiece and Branton drove in a pair of runs.

It was the final regular-season meeting between the teams. Kamehameha, which is in third place in the six-team ILH Division I, plays Pac-Five Tuesday. Fifth-place Punahou meets Iolani Tuesday.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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