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Kapaa senior Chas Okamoto grabbed a title on his last opportunity and Mililani freshman Alyssa Tobita got one on her first try today at the Carlsmith Ball/HHSAA Tennis Championships.
The finals were played at Royal Lahaina Tennis Ranch on Maui.
Punahou won both team titles. The girls edged Iolani, 18-16, for their ninth straight championship. The Buffanblu boys set the national record in high school tennis last year when they won their 20th in a row. This year they amassed 22 points — Iolani was second with 10 — to break the Hawaii record for most consecutive titles in any sport with 21. Rusty Komori has coached the last 18.
The only individual title Punahou won came in girls doubles, where top-seeded Jennifer Laws and Sarah Steele stopped teammates Ashley Nakaoka and Dani Young, 7-6 (7-4), 6-2. Laws and Nakaoka — the only seniors on the Buffanblu roster — won the doubles title together the last two years.
Junior Roman Kop and sophomore Marcel Chan, the top-seeded Interscholastic League of Honolulu champions, captured Kamehameha’s first boys doubles title in 46 years. They defeated the seventh-seeded Iolani team of Colin Tseng and Lawrence Ho, 6-3, 6-3, in the final.
Okamoto, headed to the University of Hawaii in the fall on an academic scholarship, stopped St. Anthony senior Kento Tanaka-Tamaki, 6-4, 6-2, in a boys singles final featuring the top two seeds. Tanaka has been invited to walk-on for the Pepperdine team.
Tobita and Sarah Dvorak, the freshman she beat in yesterday’s final, have lots of time to decide on college. They played some 2 hours today before Tobita won, 7-6 (7-3), 7-5, giving herself the opportunity to become only the second tennis player to win four high school singles titles. Mililani’s Erin Hoe accomplished it in 1997, ’98, ’99 and 2000.
