Radford parents and supporters greet the Rams shortly after they upset previously unbeaten Waipahu 12-2 for the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division II baseball title at Les Murakami Stadium on Saturday.
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STEVEN ERLER / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-ADVERTISER
The Radford Rams gathered around winning pitcher Daniel Mayafter after the last out.
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Radford was not going to let the past determine what happens in a big game. Instead, the Rams vowed to learn from it and come back even stronger.
The 2018 OIA and HHSAA Division II runners-up left no doubt this time around, needing just five innings to rout Waipahu 14-2 in the OIA D-II Championship game.
Waipahu (11-1) entered Saturday’s contest undefeated in its first year in Division II since getting relegated from the D-I ranks. But the Rams (10-2) came to Les Murakami Stadium with most of last year’s core intact, returning to the site of their two championship losses.
“Knowing a lot of the guys played here last year, I think just knowing the environment, it helped because it’s not a new feeling for them,” Radford coach Jacob Sur said. “But they’ve been working for this and they did an awesome job.”
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Radford pounced on Waipahu starter Seth Garcia in the top of the first, jumping out to a 2-0 lead after three hits. Ten of Garcia’s 11 pitches in the frame were strikes, playing right into the hands of the free-swinging Rams, who sent seven batters to the plate in that span.
The Marauders evened it up in the bottom of the first when cleanup hitter Chad Cadiente’s double to the left-center-field gap drove in Matthew Fiesta and Jayden Borja.
The Rams scored three more runs in the second, buoyed by Borja’s costly throwing error at third that allowed Matthew Lukins to score from second. Radford extended its lead to 5-2 when Richard Akana’s RBI single drove in Damon Nelson.
Lukins’ third hit of the day in the third inning extended the Radford advantage to 6-2. Garcia was yanked in favor of Jencen Villanueva, who allowed four more Rams to cross the plate with two outs. Akana’s second single of the day came on an 0-2 count, driving in two more to give the Rams a 10-2 advantage.
“We were just gonna hunt our pitches, and any time we got one, we barreled it up and I’m so proud of everybody,” Lukins said. “We matured a lot from last year and we know what it feels like now. We came out here and we just did our job.”
Radford put the game into mercy-rule territory with four more runs in the top of the fifth. Akana smoked a ground-rule double to left field, giving the Rams a 12-2 lead. Two more runs came after Javin Barcenilla became the third Marauder to take the mound.
“It feels good because all the hard work the coaches had been making us do — the blood, the sweat, the tears,” said Akana, who went 3-for-4 with a game-high four RBIs. “They pushed us to the point where we wanted to quit, but quitting was the easy way out.
“I’d like to thank the coaches, and the team thanks them for pushing us as hard as they did. I think if we had any other coaches, we wouldn’t be here.”
Daniel May tossed a complete game for Radford and was in control after a rocky first inning. The junior got more comfortable as the game wore on, and the cushion given by the Rams’ bats certainly helped.
May walked two and allowed two hits in his five innings of work, using an efficient 64 pitches to get through his outing. With just two strikeouts, he was also helped by a solid defense that didn’t commit any errors.
“I worked hard all year. It’s been an all-year thing. Been doing it for three years, this was my breakthrough,” he said. “I had a rough start, but I got the jitters out. I just tried to pound the zone.
“When we put up 10 runs, Coach Jake just told me ‘Hey, just relax out there.’”
A previously unblemished season for Waipahu temporarily went off the rails on Saturday, due in large part to five errors on the field and four scoreless innings at the plate to end the game.
“This is definitely a ton of motivation,” Waipahu coach Ian Ferris said. “Tip our hats to Radford, they came out swinging it and we didn’t. We didn’t pitch all that great or hit or field the ball.”
Both teams clinched the OIA’s two spots in the state tournament, which runs May 9-11 on Kauai. This year, Sur, Akana, Lukins and May all said Radford will take on the Garden Isle with a bigger belief that the job can be done. The Rams lost to Damien 12-0 in last year’s championship game.
“That’s an awesome thing that hopefully we can do,” Sur said. “Like I always tell them, we gotta go one day at a time, control the controllables every day. If we do that, then things should fall into place.”
