Growing pains early in the year prepared Kamehameha sophomore Christian DeJesus for his final start of the season.
The Warriors coaching staff worked the hard-throwing right-hander into the pitching rotation to mixed results in his first few varsity appearances. But the rough outings set the foundation for a poised finish on Thursday.
Given the starting assignment for Kamehameha’s state tournament quarterfinal game against defending champion Baldwin, DeJesus held the third-seeded Bears to four hits and struck out six in the Warriors’ 6-1 win at Les Murakami Stadium.
“He’s come a long way from when we started and we just had to keep getting him in there,” Kamehameha coach Tommy Perkins said. “Slow start in the beginning of the season, but he threw above average.
“With every game, every week he’s gotten a little better. We just wanted to give our younger guys more experience.… It’s paying off for us a little bit now at the right time.”
Kamehameha will play its fourth game in the five days when the Warriors face Waiakea in today’s 4 p.m. semifinal with the winner advancing to Saturday’s Division I title game.
After having the ILH Division I championship pushed to Monday after three postponements, the Warriors had one day to recharge before facing Kalani in the first round of the Wally Yonamine Foundation/HHSAA State Baseball Championships.
Blaise Pontes fired six shutout innings in Wednesday’s 3-0 win over the Falcons and DeJesus followed up by limiting Baldwin, the MIL champion, to one unearned run over 51⁄3 innings and senior Jesse Awa got the final four outs.
“It’s the last start of the season — just come out and throw everything I’ve got and give my team the best chance to win,” DeJesus said of his approach to his first state tournament appearance.
“It was more the fastball (and) come back with the curve. The curve wasn’t really working today, but the fastball kept me in it.”
Perkins said the Warriors took some time to “get back to basics” offensively prior to the game and first baseman Hunter Fujitani broke a 1-1 tie with a two-out single in the top of the fourth inning. Logan Salcedo and Kawai Takemura followed with RBI singles to give DeJesus a 4-1 lead.
The Warriors added two more runs in the sixth, the first scoring on an error.
“When we play at this level … we cannot afford to make the mistakes we made on defense. Even offensively we could have taken a lot better approaches,” Baldwin coach Shane Dudoit said. “We haven’t seen anybody who threw that hard all year.”
Campbell 5, Hilo 4
The Sabers (16-1) rallied with three runs in the top of the sixth inning to advance to the semifinals for the fifth consecutive year.
Markus Ramos, who struggled in 41⁄3 innings on the mound, tied the game with a two-run single and Kekahi Reiny Aloy, Campbell’s No. 9 hitter, singled home the go-ahead run with two outs to give Campbell the lead.
Ramos finished 2-for-3 with three RBIs at the plate after giving up four earned runs on five hits and five walks.
Hilo pitcher Joey Jarneski gave up two earned runs on six hits in six innings with three walks and three strikeouts. Three runs charged to him were unearned. The Vikings (15-3) made five errors.
The Sabers have won both of their state tournament games by identical 5-4 scores and are 6-0 in one-run games this season.
“The state tournament is all about getting to the next day,” Campbell coach Rory Pico said. “Score one more than the other team. All of the other stats don’t come into play except for the score at this point.”
