Second seeds swept singles titles and top seeds swept doubles on Saturday’s final day of the Carlsmith Ball/HHSAA State Tennis Championships. That’s all the Punahou girls needed for their 10th consecutive title, holding off another exhausting challenge from ‘Iolani at the Patsy T. Mink CORP Tennis Complex.
Buffanblu sophomore Katie Kim and freshman teammate Ashley Ishimura defeated ‘Iolani’s Sari Kwee and Kristen Poei 6-2, 6-1 in a winner-take-all final that gave Punahou the championship by three points.
Mililani sophomore Alyssa Tobita got halfway to history by defending her singles title, 6-4, 7-5 over Sarah Dvorak, a sophomore from Waiakea. Dvorak, who also reached the final last year, blasted back from 0-5 in the second set only to have Tobita take the final two games of a 2-hour match.
Erin Hoe, also from Mililani, is the only player to win four Hawaii state singles championships.
"When Sarah was coming back I wasn’t thinking about that," Tobita said. "Now I have two more years and it’s possible, but it will be really hard because Sarah will always be there. I’ve just got to keep working for next year and not think about two years."
Junior Marcel Chan made his own history, winning Kamehameha’s first boys singles title since Kalama Kim in 1987, and only its second ever. He upset top-seeded Brandon Lee from Punahou 4-6, 6-3, 7-5. It took 2½ hours and every one of Chan’s brilliant backhands down the line.
Punahou’s boys clinched their 22nd straight championship Friday, ultimately collecting 26 points to runners-up ‘Iolani and Kamehameha, with eight each.
The Buffanblu added a doubles title Saturday when freshman Kawika Lam and sophomore Zander Kim defeated ‘Iolani’s Darin Poei and Lawrence Ho 6-0, 6-4.
"We played solid and got ourselves into the point," Kim said. "The focus was great."
They have played doubles together "since forever" and share familiar fathers in the tennis world and beyond. Local tennis coach David Lam is the Punahou assistant. Zander’s father, Daniel Dae Kim, is an actor/serious tennis parent who missed states because he had commitments at the White House correspondents’ dinner, "Live with Kelly" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live."
Kim and Ishimura were just as dominant, winning the first three games and never letting Poei and Kwee back into the match. That was in stark contrast to Friday, when, after dropping just one game their first three matches, Kim and Ishimura were two points from defeat in the semis — and ‘Iolani two points from its first state title in 10 years.
"I stopped yelling," Kim explained of the Friday meltdown.
"She stopped yelling and they played better," Ishimura said of Raiders Brooke Alcuran and Kara Okazaki.
"Then we were down 7-3 in the (third-set) tiebreaker and I went crazy," Kim added.
She remained crazy good in the final, relentlessly attacking while Ishimura was astonishingly consistent, thanks in large part to a big-time cross-court backhand.
The rivalry between Tobita and Dvorak already goes back some five years and is all but dead even. Dvorak is the top-ranked player in the state’s most intriguing age group, but Tobita now has two state titles.
Both are very good, in very different ways.
"She totally has so much power," Tobita says. "I can’t even describe it. When she hits the ball it sounds like her strings are breaking every time because she hits it so hard. Her game is really good.
"The way I play is like … she has trouble with it. I’m just keeping the ball in. When I start making errors is when she comes back."
