Loading up on a Subway sandwich Saturday afternoon was not a good idea for Kapolei heavyweight Donte Keliiholokai.
He felt a bit too full entering the final bout of the Oahu Interscholastic Association boys wrestling dual championships at the Waianae gym, but came away with a 5-3 victory over Campbell’s Isaiah Sylva to put the Hurricanes on the verge of wrapping up the team championship.
Keliiholokai’s win gave Kapolei a 27-27 tie with Campbell, leaving the title to be decided by a series of statistical tiebreakers. The first three tiebreakers didn’t do the trick, but the fourth did. It came down to which squad won more matches in the final, and the Hurricanes clinched the 28-27 win by taking seven of 13 matches.
It was Kapolei’s second straight OIA team crown.
“We reclaimed it,” Hurricanes coach Sean Salter said. “It’s something we hope to keep on going every year, and we’d like to see if we can bring (this type of strong performance) to the states.”
Keliiholokai nearly didn’t get it done. A reversal by Silva with about 35 seconds to go tied the match at 3-all, but a few seconds later, Keliiholokai got a reversal of his own for what turned out to be the winning points.
“This means a lot and it hit me when I saw all my teammates kissing the plaque. I never knew how much it meant for them,” said Keliiholokai, who didn’t wrestle competitively last year.
Phillip Mallory kept Campbell in the running with his pin of the Hurricanes’ Gianni Oyadomari at 160. It turned a 24-9 deficit into a much more manageable 24-15 hole heading into the final five matches.
“That pin was big for us,” J.B. Gallarde, a Sabers coach, said. “Mallory really stepped up.”
Micah Tynanes’ 8-2 win over Kapolei’s Aaron Sotoa at 195 tied the match at 24-all and the Sabers went ahead 27-24 on James Sullivan’s 8-3 win over Johnny Morrison.
Had either Tynanes or Sullivan — two prominent Hawaii wrestlers — won by pin (adding three more team points than a regular win), Campbell may have won the team match with no tiebreaker necessary.
That fact wasn’t lost on Keliiholokai, who thought both Sotoa and Morrison played pivotal roles by staying alive until the final whistle.
In the girls team final, Pearl City stormed past Roosevelt 48-24.
The Rough Riders grabbed an early 18-6 lead, thanks in part to Macy Higa’s pin over Alexis Ford, but it was all Chargers from there. Pearl City’s Asia Evans (127), Nina Seoane (155) and Jenny Fuamatu (168) won by pin, and Mikayla Abe notched a 3-2 victory over Xiaolin Mai at 107.
