ILH Baseball
Buffanblu battled through adversity in 2015 baseball season


 



Sat, Apr 4, 2015 @ [ 2:00 pm ]


FINAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R H E
Punahou 0 031031882
Kamehameha 4 1 200007115

W: Kekoa Viera    L: Hunter Breault

KSK: Codie Paiva 2-4 run rbi 2 dbl; Ladd Ah Choy 2.3 IP 2 ER 2 K
PUN: Kai Terada-Herzer 2-3 2 runs rbi dbl; Kekoa Viera 5.0 IP 2 ER 2 K


The Punahou baseball team didn't come by a whole lot of wins during Keenan Sue's first season as coach of his alma mater. Not on the diamond, anyway.

But for the 1997 Buffanblu alumnus, there were far more important matters to tend to then scoring more runs than the opponent.

"The expectation that year was let's instill these principals for how we want to establish the foundation of this program," Sue said of the 2015 season. "I think we just wanted to establish a culture of accountability and hard work and develop good people and with that, the process will evolve, but I kind of didn't care about wins and losses."

For the record, Punahou posted a 5-10 record and finished a half-game out of last place in the arduous Interscholastic League of Honolulu, widely considered the best baseball-playing league in the state — especially so at the Division-I level.

Obviously, there was no trip to the state tournament for the Buffanblu in Sue's debut campaign.

Before he even got the job, however, Sue made it clear to his future higher-ups in the Punahou administration that he was in it for the long haul.

"We had a process that we believed in and when I applied for the job we put together a package from year one to year ten in a two-inch thick binder and almost like a vision board, ‘This is our vision for what we see the program could be and how we're going to do it and if you give us a shot, we're going to try and do it,' " he recalled.

"But the kids do it, we just create the framework so the kids deserve all the credit because they're doing the work. We're just there to shepherd them along and that's how we see it, that we're just the current caretakers of the program," Sue added.

Punahou saw its unprecedented string of seven consecutive state championships under former coach Eric Kadooka come to an end in 2011. The following season they went 15-4 and qualified for the state tournament under Kenny Harrison, however, a 6-9 record in 2013 was followed by a 3-12-1 mark the year before Sue took over the helm. Prior to that, Sue was coaching at his collegiate alma mater, Division-III Macalester in St. Paul, Minnesota.

"When I moved home in 2004 I started coaching JV with a bunch of my (high school) classmates. When Eric Kadooka was at Punahou, we were coaching the JV. We learned a lot of Eric and he really gave us our shot to come back to Punahou," detailed Sue, who is a member of the Macalester Athletics Hall of Fame.

But Sue was never a head coach at any level.

"At that point it was all theoretical, right? ‘What would we do if we were in charge?,' but I think what changed was the players changed. The way they responded to coaching was not how we were coached; I think we were all ‘old school,' " Sue said.

What had worked for Sue — who played for Pal and Dave Eldredge, along with Galen Kitamura during his time at Punahou — clearly wasn't going to do the trick with the "new school."

"It was a wake-up call when we came back that we were going to have to get through to these guys in another way. We were kind of the last bastion of the old school way, but we knew enough about how kids were responded that we knew were had to change. You couldn't just yell at them, you had to reach out to them individually, but that's something that I believe in: quality of relationships. They don't care what you know until they know that you care," Sue said.

Sue knew that it would be a multi-year process to set that foundation and that there would be some bumps along the way. Although it didn't show in the win-loss record, that process was sped up in that 2015 season thanks to a diligent senior class.

"From a team perspective and wins and losses, it wasn't a very successful year, but I hate to be philosophical about it but we're in the business of having these guys be the best version of themselves they can be, on and off the field and although we didn't put much wins up, those seniors were great," Sue said.

Among the senior leaders that Sue referenced were Robert Straton, Jantzen Tamanaha, Allan Dong and Heisman Hosoda.

"They didn't know us from anybody, but they really embraced us as a new staff and actually, culturally we had a really positive year that first year because I think they were very grateful for our enthusiasm and we were super excited that they accepted us as their coaches," Sue said.

But the Buffanblu got off on the wrong foot to open the league season that spring. On a chilly Friday evening, beneath the bright lights of Les Murakami Stadium, the team stumbled out of the blocks with a 10-0 loss to Mid-Pacific that was halted after six innings due to the mercy rule.

"We got mercy ruled and I remember thinking, ‘Did they hire the right guy?,' " Sue laughed.

At the time, however, it was no laughing matter. And his team had less than 24 hours to regroup from being on the wrong end of a rout at the hands of the reigning ILH champion to facing off against the defending Division I state champion in Saint Louis.

Punahou rallied from a 10-6 deficit after five winnings to beat the Crusaders, 13-11, that Saturday afternoon at Hans L'Orange Park.

It's the last game that Sue remembers from that season.

"I only remember the first game and the second game," Sue admitted. "I don't remember any of the other games."

The bounce-back victory over Saint Louis provided a bit of momentum for the Buffanblu, but they went on to lose four of their next five, including three straight games.

However, they did manage to win three of four during a two-week stretch in late March to early April. A 7-5 win over Saint Louis on March 24 was followed by an 18-5 loss to Kamehameha the very next day. However, Punahou rebounded with a 6-2 victory over Iolani two days later before a bye leading into a an Apr. 4th meeting against Kamehameha at Ala Wai Field.

It was the third scheduled meeting between the teams that year; the Warriors had won the first two games — both times in mercy-rule fashion. But this one would play out much differently.

Early on, however, it looked like it would be another runaway victory for the Warriors, whose first five batters of the game reached base safely. They plated four runs in the bottom of the first on five hits, including back-to-back-to-back doubles by Matt Yokota, Kekai Rios and Codie Paiva.

Kamehameha added a run in the second on Paiva's RBI double to score Kahoea Akau, but Punahou pushed across three runs in the top of the third. Noah Goss drew a bases-loaded walk to score Kai Terada-Herzer and the very next batter, Dong, singled through the left side of the infield to score Jantzen Tamanaha and Easton Takamoto.

The Warriors stretched their lead back out to 7-3 with Brandon Henderson's RBI triple and a run-scoring single by Nicholas Penzetta in the bottom of the third.

Tamanaha's sacrifice fly to bring Cole Cabrera in to score made it a 7-4 game after four complete. A few inning later, Tamanaha stroked a line drive that resulted in a fielding error and allowed two runs to score: Andrew Matsueda from third and Terada-Herzer from second. Three batters later, Tamanaha came around to score the tying run on a single by Dong up the middle.

Punahou pitcher Kekoa Vieira set the top of the Kamehameha lineup — Akau, Yokota and Rios — down in order in the bottom of the sixth.

The Warriors brought in hard-throwing, University of Oregon-bound pitcher Hunter Breault out of the bullpen to start the top of the seventh inning, but he walked the leadoff man in Mason Asato, who worked the count full before drawing ball four. Scott Nishioka then executed a sacrifice bunt to advance Asato to second base, where he was replaced by Straton as a courtesy runner.

After Matt Nakamoto walked on four pitches, Matsueda reached on an infield error to load the bases with one out for Terada-Herzer. The sophomore singled on a line drive to right field on a 2-2 pitch that scored Straton — the go-ahead run — from third.

"Any time you can have a team approach to manufacturing runs, we believe in that, especially at the high school level," Sue said. "In college and the pros, yeah, those guys can hit bombs, but on our level it works when you can put pressure on the defense and put the ball in play."

Although the Buffanblu left the bases loaded and failed to add any insurance runs after Straton crossed the plate, Sue praised Terada-Herzer for coming through in the clutch.

"For a sophomore to come in and come through in that situation was big. Kai went on to become a staple in our outfield. He was a good high school ball player and he went on to play at Amherst College, a D3 school on the east coast, but that, if anything, established Kai going forward; He and Cole Cabrera anchored our outfield.

But Punahou wasn't quite out of the woods just yet. Paiva reached on an error to lead off the bottom of the seventh and put the tying run aboard. However, Vieira struck out the next two batters — both looking — and then got Henderson to hit a pop-up to Dong at shortstop for the final out.

Vieira picked up the win in relief of starter Michael Viola, who went just two innings and gave up five runs (four unearned) on seven hits. Vieira held the Warriors to two runs on four hits over his five innings of work. He walked two and struck out two and threw just 46 pitches in his outing.

"He was a crafty lefty," Sue said of Vieira. "He was a really good water polo player and I think baseball was kind of a secondary sport for him, but he really worked hard and did his best and he ended up being a really solid pitcher for us. Good kid, good teammate, great competitor, comes from a great family — his mom was our team mom — and just a really, really good kid. I think just last year I got a call from him asking if he can use me for a (job) reference, so it's starting to get to this point where these kids are entering adult life."

And that's what it all comes back to for Sue and his staff: life after baseball.

"Yeah, we won a crucial game that day and yeah, it was proof and validation of our efforts, but it's always about the long game. These guys are not all going to be Big Leaguers, but they're going to be big league fathers, big league employees, big league leaders and my job is to make sure that they're prepared for all those challenges," Sue reiterated.

He went on, "The type of ballplayer you become is of very little consequence, but how you go about becoming that ball player is everything. You earn the right to have these friends for life if you do things the right way: work hard, be a good teammate, be somebody you can count on. That was what we established that first year and baseball was second. I tell my guys all the time that, ‘Nobody will remember what you batting average is 20 years from now, but they will remember if you were a good teammate and good guy and if you worked hard."

Sue's squad went on to win just one of its final six games that season, but the very next year it went 14-10 overall and made its first appearance in the state tournament in four years.

"We snuck in the back door to states, which we were all kind of surprised by," Sue called.

Punahou won the consolation bracket at states that season, but missed out on a return trip in 2017, much to the chagrin of Sue.

"We were supposed to be really good and we had a couple missteps with the players and they were mostly my fault," he lamented. "I made some mistakes that if I could have done again, I would have done differently. If I was wiser and more mature, I probably would have handled it differently."

Just as he asks of his players, Sue did some self-reflecting of his own after that season.

"You can only learn if you make mistakes and all the success that we've had the past few years — which has been pretty consistent — has been the result of us being humble enough to say, ‘We screwed up, now how do we get better? How do we get the kids to be the best version of themselves?,' " he pondered.

Punahou turned in a 14-8 record in 2018, when it once again returned to the state tournament. But the breakthrough came a year later, when Sue's team went 17-4 en route to capturing both the ILH and state championships.

For Sue, it all goes back to the foundation set with that 2015 team.

"Those seniors really embraced the message of working hard and doing things the right way and the wins will come when they come. Winning is just a byproduct of doing things the right way because there are so many things that you don't control about winning a game or a championship that you've just got to focus on developing good habits every day," he conveyed. "Wins come because you create good habits in practice with each other. You hear all these great coaches like Nick Saban say it all the time that greatness is little things done well day after day after day and that's something that we've carried forward, that we are grateful for everything and entitled to nothing."

Things have seemingly come full circle for Sue, who is entering his seventh season at Punahou. Among those who he counts as coaches within the program are Kitamura, his former high school ball coach, and Tamanaha, who was a senior on that 2015 season.

"He knows a thing or two about a thing or two," Sue joked in regards to Kitamura, a varsity assistant.

Tamanaha, meanwhile, is on the intermediate staff.

"He was the only guy from that class of seniors that went on to play college baseball. He played at George Fox (Newburg, Oregon) and had a good career and after he finished school he wanted to come back and help and that's probably the greatest feeling, right? I mean, the highlights are not even baseball-related," Sue said. "That first year we established what we were going to be about — people first, relationships first — and that taught us a lot because we didn't even know what we didn't know that first year. We were all so clueless, we had all coached baseball at intermediate and JV, and for me a little bit of college, but it was the first time that any of us on staff were in charge of the varsity squad, so it was a lot of growing pains and a lot of lessons learned."



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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