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Kalani Takase | ScoringLiveDecember 5, 2021, 12:21am
Sat, Dec 4, 2021 @ Farrington [ 6:30 pm ]
KALIHI — The Red Raiders are on the hunt for title No. 28.
No. 1 Kahuku secured its spot in next week's Oahu Interscholastic Association Open Division championship game with its 33-7 win over ninth-ranked Waianae at Farrington's Edward ‘Skippa' Diaz Stadium at Kusunoki Field Saturday.
The top-seeded Red Raiders improved to 7-0 on the season and will play No. 4 Mililani (5-1) for the league crown at Leilehua's Hugh Yoshida Stadium Friday night.
The fourth-seeded Seariders saw their two-game win streak snapped and fell to 3-4. They will play at third-seeded Campbell — which lost to the Trojans, 42-7, in the weekend's other semifinal Friday night — in the third-place game Saturday, with the winner claiming the OIA's final spot in the four-team state tournament later this month.
Brock Fonoimoana got Kahuku off on the right foot Saturday night when he returned the opening kickoff 75 yards for a touchdown. The 6-foot-2, 190-pound junior intercepted a pass on defense not long after that and then he was on the receiving end of a 43-yard touchdown pass — all before halftime.
"Brock played a great game tonight," Red Raiders coach Sterling Carvalho said of Fonoimoana, who has scholarship offers on the table from BYU, Utah and Virginia.
"We know he's capable of that. I mean, he's highly recruited right now as a junior, so he had the talent. He's one of our two-way stars and tonight he just stepped up when we needed him to step up," Carvalho added.
In an attempt to kick away from dynamite return man Kainoa "Kaikai" Carvalho, Waianae booted the opening kickoff short to Fonoimoana, one of the upbacks. Fonoimoana navigated his way through a wall of defenders along the left sideline on his way to the end zone.
Fonoimoana credited special teams coordinator Stewart Carvalho for anticipating the short kick.
"He knew that was gonna happen so we set up a play for that and my guys just blocked perfect up the middle, so I seen the hole and I just hit it," Fonoimoana said.
Sterling Carvalho said the play was representative of the depth of talent that the Red Raiders have the luxury of turning to.
"We're very fortunate that we don't just have Kaikai, we have a whole team of athletes and it showed tonight that if they'll key on one person, then we have another — so we had Brock on the kick return, we had Manulele (Ah You) on the pass, we had Brock on another long pass touchdown — so if they take away our weapons, other guys are able to step up and do the job," he said.
But Kaikai Carvalho still managed to get his. The 5-foot-7, 160-pound junior speedster made his presence felt with his 85-yard touchdown on a screen pass from quarterback Jordan Mariteragi that gave the Red Raiders a 12-0 lead with seven minutes and 16 seconds left in the second quarter. After a penalty against Waianae for hurdling on the extra point attempt, Kahuku opted to go for two and was successful with a Kana Loa Kaluna plunge from a yard and a half out to make it a 14-0 advantage.
The Seariders got on the board with 95 seconds left in the first half, when they culminated a 12-play, 77-yard drive that took 5:32 off the clock with a 7-yard touchdown on Akoni Halemano's play-action pass to Jamal Plunkett on a fourth-and-5.
Fonoimoana called the Waianae touchdown a "wake-up call.
"Our coaches knew it was gonna happen, (but) we just had a little mistake, but that was a wake-up call for us to just get a heads up and just finish the game," he said.
Linebacker Leonard Ah You disclosed that he was the defender responsible for covering Plunkett on the play.
"I took that on myself because I was supposed to run out the running back, but you know, we all miss plays and when you have mistakes you have to keep your head up and keep playing till the next series and that's when I came out and made the two sacks so, you know, it got me going a little bit, but it shouldn't have happened," said Ah You, a 6-foot-3, 195-pound junior who registered back-to-back sacks on Waianae's ensuing possession and had another after halftime to finish with three of Kahuku's six total sacks.
Sterling Carvalho said Ah You's ownership of the missed assignment speaks to the type of accountability there is amongst his players.
"That's the good thing about our team right now: we understand what mistakes we're making and being able to make adjustments," he said. "In the second half our team came out and Waianae didn't score, so they made the adjustments, they knew what they did wrong and they just had to execute the game plan."
Before the intermission, however — and just two plays after the Seariders got on the scoreboard — Fonoimoana and the Kahuku offense stole back the momentum with his 43-yard touchdown reception on a post pattern that left him wide open for Mariteragi to hit over the middle.
"I was open," Fonoimoana acknowledged. "I just cut in and the quarterback seen me and threw me a nice ball and I was just able to turn it upfield."
Ah You credited Fonoimoana for stepping up Saturday night.
"He started the game off strong with that kick return — it's always good to start off with a touchdown on the first play — but Brock's a very good athlete and he plays very smart on the field, smart IQ on football," Ah You said.
Waianae coach Matt Murakawa explained the difficulties involved with a matchup against the Red Raiders.
"It's a pick-your-poison (situation) whenever you play them. They got a boatload of athletes and we just weren't up for that moment for whatever reason, so we just gotta do better on that, I mean, even with that (kickoff return) I thought we played well, you just gotta score — you gotta match them and get in front of them — that's the only way you can beat these guys," Murakawa said.
Murakawa's squad squandered a golden opportunity when defensive lineman Primo Valu intercepted Mariteragi and returned it inside the Kahuku 20-yard line. A penalty on the return, however, set the Seariders back at their own 45 to start the drive. Still, they managed to penetrate all the way to the Kahuku 16, but ultimately turned it over on downs and four plays later, the Red Raiders cashed in with Kaikai Carvalho's 85-yard TD grab.
"When you move the ball that much you gotta score, that's the bottom line of it," Murakawa lamented. "We didn't execute well enough on offense and that kind of hurt us a lot, so that was the main thing. We moved the ball, but I mean, against these guys if you don't score on them the game doesn't get tight and they're great front-runners, so as soon as they get a lead, they're good at extending leads."
Which is just what Kahuku did after the break.
On just its third play from scrimmage out of the intermission, Kahuku went quick strike with a 77-yard TD pass from Mariteragi to Manulele Ah You.
About four minutes into the fourth quarter, Mariteragi called his own number with a scramble on third-and-25 that he turned into a 30-yard TD run. It was Mariteragi's first game back in action since he sustained a shoulder injury against Mililani three weeks ago that forced him to missed the regular-season finale against Campbell last week.
"I'm happy that he's back," Fonoimoana said of Mariteragi, who finished 17-of-21 passing for 344 yards. He threw three TD passes and was intercepted twice — although one came on a desperation heavy at the end of the first half.
Mariteragi played the entire first half and led two more drives after halftime. He alternated second-half possessions with backup Waika Crawford, who completed 6 of 8 passes for 83 yards and an interception.
"Yeah, it was good," Sterling Carvalho said of Mariteragi's return. "He was out for a couple weeks, so now we have two great quarterbacks. What we wanted to do in the second half is give them each a series — every other series we switched them in and out — so both went in there and both was able to move the ball effectively."
Kahuku passed for 427 of its 493 yards of total offense, but was hampered by 19 penalties or 188 yards.
Waianae was held to 103 yards of total offense. Running back Alvin "Kolu" Quisquirin-Sabagala carried 20 times for a hard-earned 85 yards.
When the teams met in the regular season back on Nov. 6 at Waianae's Raymond Torii Field, the Red Raiders posted a 36-point first half en route to a 50-7 rout.
Ah You said they faced a different bunch of Seariders this time around.
"They were way more physical than the first time. This time they came ready to bang and we were expecting it. We took them lightly, but we came out in the second half and played the game that Kahuku always plays," he said. "They started off very fast and we had a lot of sloppy plays and a lot of penalties, but we just had to rally ourselves together during half and just come out stronger."
Waianae was 4 of 13 on third-down conversions and 1 of 4 on fourth downs, while Kahuku was 4 of 6 on third downs.
Six of the Red Raiders' penalties were for holding, five were for false starts and another four were a result of personal fouls.
Kahuku has won 27 OIA championships in school history, its most recent in 2019, when it edged Mililani in the title game by a score of 7-3.
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