Kenan Sadanaga passed for four of his five touchdowns in the first quarter as No. 3 Leilehua defeated Radford 52-0 on Saturday night at Hugh Yoshida Stadium.
A homecoming audience of about 2,000 saw Leilehua improve to 4-0 in the Oahu Interscholastic Association Red West (5-0-1 overall). Radford dropped to 1-3 (1-5 overall).
"I feel good," coach Mark Kurisu said. "Any time you can get all of your players in, it’s a tribute to all of their hard work in practice. We had two weeks to get ready for Radford. A lot of our guys got playing experience. We caught Radford with some guys out."
Sadanaga was 17-for-20 for 216 yards before taking a seat on the bench with the Mules up 45-0 midway through the second quarter.
"Kenan is like a lot of our other quarterbacks like Bryant Moniz, Andrew Manley. What makes them great quarterbacks is they’re great kids, they do the little things, take care of their grades, at home. They take that same philosophy to football, study a lot of film, work with the coaches, stay late after practice to work with the receivers," Kurisu said.
The southpaw fired touchdown passes to four different receivers, including two to Jeremiah Andrade, highlighted by a 62-yard catch and stutter-step move past a defender for a score.
It was a rough night for the Rams’ offense, which didn’t record a first down until the second quarter.
Tim Momiyama’s 26-yard field goal opened the scoring for the Mules.
Sadanaga missed on his first two pass attempts, but connected on his next 14 out of the shotgun and pistol. He fired an 11-yard strike to Andrade on a post pattern, a fourth-and-1 call, to give the Mules a 10-0 lead.
Sadanaga tossed a soft 2-yard play-action pass to tight end Penitito Melei for a 16-0 lead. After his 62-yard touchdown pass to Andrade, the two connected again on the PAT. Andrade leaped over a row of defenders into the end zone, and the Mules led 24-0 with 2:42 left in the opening quarter.
Tevaka Sanborn’s 36-yard interception return to paydirt stretched the lead to 31-0, and after Allen Racette scored on an 11-yard spiral from Sadanaga with 29 seconds left in the quarter, Leilehua led by 38.
Sadanaga’s final play, a 10-yard toss to Josh Jenks in the left corner of the end zone, was set up by a sack from Melei, with the fumble recovered by Andrew Sesepasara at the Radford 9-yard line. Leilehua led 45-0 with 9:07 to go in the second quarter.
Linebacker Reece Acohido had one of Leilehua’s three sacks. Melei, a two-way standout, had a sack and an interception. Leland Wong had two of the Mules’ three fumble recoveries. Mikal Peyton (interception) and Jeremy Taua (sack) added highlight plays.
"We’ve been working real hard during practice," Acohido said. "It’s paying off. We worked hard from February. All our hard work is paying off. We stuck in our base. Everyone got to play today, that was good."
The Mules cut down on penalties this time out, with 90 yards on nine flags.
"It’s real positive to see our guys continue to get better. The biggest thing is I just hope everybody sees how much our kids love each other, how much they enjoy just playing the game," Kurisu said. "We get upset when our players get upset. We don’t want them to be upset, there’s no reason for it. Cheap shot, penalty, whatever, there’s no reason to be upset. That’s something we want to be sure we improve on."
