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Kalani Takase | ScoringLiveJanuary 18, 2025, 11:38pm
Sat, Jan 18, 2025 @ Kaiser
HAWAII KAI — The title is back with the Trojans.
A year after it reached the league final only to lose in penalty kicks, No. 4 Mililani made good on its second chance Saturday night with a 3-0 win over No. 6 Waipahu in the title game of the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division I tournament.
A crowd of about 500 fans at Kaiser Stadium saw the Trojans (13-0) lay claim to their league-record 21st OIA championship with a shutout of the Marauders (11-2).
Maya George scored a goal late in the first half and Jaslene Cayetano and Leila Leano added second-half goals to help Mililani seize its seventh league crown in the last nine years.
"This was huge," said George, a senior forward and third-year varsity player. "Just showing up for each other and playing for each other has kind of been our motto for this season, so just being able to do it together and finish together was what we wanted coming into the season."
Mililani, the top seed out of the Western Division played into a prevailing wind for the first half, which largely factored into the play all night.
West No. 2 seed Waipahu benefitted from the strong gusts and had the better run of play for the first 20 minutes of the contest. It registered four of its five total shots on goal in the first half and limited the Trojans to a single shot on goal in the first 25 minutes.
However, Mililani broke through just before halftime when George got the Trojans on the board with less than two minutes until the break.
Kalena Yamashita found George with a throw-in deep in Waipahu territory. George attempted a shot on goal after a touch, but it was deflected by a defender and off of herself before it settled at George's feet. George's second attempt, from about 12 yards out, found the right side of the goal.
"I just saw a bunch of defenders in front of me and coach (Brendyn Agbayani) always tells me that I need to be stronger and body up, so I was just thinking about what he was saying and just trying to get the ball in the net," said George, who stands 5 feet, 9 inches tall.
George was in the starting lineup but went to the bench early on before she eventually returned to her center-forward position. She said the pause in game action — which has been the regular substitution pattern all season for the talent-rich Trojans — allows her to see the game from a different perspective and provides her with more direction upon re-entry.
"Definitely. Watching my teammates and just seeing what everyone can do to be better — we all try to help each other at the end of the day — it just worked out in our favor today," said George, whose nine goals on the year rank second on the team.
While she was out of the game, Agbayani took the time to reinforce the message he had been relaying to George throughout the season.
"When I pulled out Maya and I told her she had to play bigger — ‘You're one of the leading scorers' — and you know, Maya came in and I told her, ‘You have the size and the frame,' but the funny thing about Maya is she's not a (center forward) in club and for me to ask her to have that responsibility of her playing at the forward, she's handled that very well and her confidence is just rising right now," said Agbayani, the first-year Mililani coach.
The Trojans have yet to go scoreless through the first half in any of their 13 games this year. George's late goal kept that streak intact.
"It meant a lot and it kept our momentum strong," she said. "I think it just gave everybody some more hope."
Conversely, the goal took much of the Marauders' momentum that they had been building over the first 38-plus minutes away in the closing moments of the half.
"We were playing well and then whether everyone's thinking that it's close to half and we kind of relax a bit or not, or they just wanted that play a little more, the ball went the right direction — yeah, for sure, deflating — but one-zero going into half, I thought we were OK to be honest. All we needed to do was get the next goal and it's tied again, so I'd rather be down one-zero than two-zero," Waipahu coach Brent Murakami said.
However, things did not go the way that Murakami and the Marauders had hoped.
Just four minutes into the second half, a Waipahu foul gave Mililani a free kick from about 45 yards out. Cayetano initiated the restart with a low-lining shot off of her right foot that reached Waipahu's goalkeeper on the fly. The ball struck the goalie's hands, popped over her head and trickled across the end line to double up Mililani's lead.
The Trojans added an insurance goal in the 56th minute when Leila Leano was on the receiving end of a throw-in from Yamashita. Leano's first touch went up in the air directly behind her and, off of the volley, she twisted in mid-air and put a right-footed shot from about 20 yards out into the left side of the goal.
"Leila is a player and when she wants to go and make something happen, she has that skill to be that playmaker and she always just does her best," Agbayani said of Leano, a senior midfielder signed with Seattle University.
Murakami tipped his proverbial cap to Leano for her skillful execution on the goal.
"I mean, that ball was just hit solid. I don't think any ‘keeper in our state is gonna go block that ball," Murakami said.
It was Leano's fourth goal of the OIA tournament and her team-leading 11th goal of the season.
Leano, George and Cayetano — the Trojans' top three scorers on the year — have combined for 27 total goals.
"Shooting is a skill and it takes grit to put it in the net, but the three goals is because everybody playing into it and connecting to get it to our playmakers," Agbayani said.
Meanwhile, Mililani's defense turned in yet another clean sheet; It has yet to allow a goal this year. Agbayani praised senior center-backs Kyla Okamoto and Camryn Kunihisa for their consistency in anchoring the backline.
"Like I've said before, they're the two best in the state. They complement each other well and that's their goal and it's tough to keep getting clean sheets with the amount of games we've played, but like we say, that's the statistic that we take the most pride in as a defense-first team and the girls have bought into that this year. They know that if you're going to win a championship, like tonight, you have to play defense," Agbayani stated.
Goalkeeper Rylee Unebasami made five saves for the Trojans, while Zinn Kurose registered six stops between the posts for the Marauders.
Waipahu was seeking its third league title and first since 2012. Both of its previous championships came at the Division II level.
In his postgame comments to his players, Murakami attempted to turn the page — and their focus — to the state tournament coming up in less than two weeks.
"I told them to take it all in because usually we have sad faces getting knocked out in the first round, or in the quarterfinals, or last year in the semifinals," he said.
"They should be proud of themselves getting here and then now we've just got to flip our thinking and now we have an opportunity to host a first-round game at our place at states, which would be awesome, so that's now the new mindset: We couldn't get this game, we gotta get the next one," Murakami added.
The Marauders only two losses this season have come at the hands of the Trojans, who won the regular-season meeting between the teams back on Dec. 13 by the same score.
Mililani will have a seeded berth at states and a bye into the quarterfinals.
"That's huge because playing this amount of games, the girls need some healing and some recovery and it gives us a chance to watch the film back of who we played and who we're preparing for, but like I told the girls, the biggest opponent we're going to face is ourselves and we've got to continue to work on ourselves, work on the little details to move forward, so this is just a little stepping stone because I really know they want to go all the way," Agbayani said.
The Motiv8 Foundation/HHSAA Division I Girls Soccer State Championships gets underway on Jan. 27 at regional sites and concludes on Feb. 1 at the Waipio Peninsula Soccer Complex.
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