Lahainaluna players raised the Hawaii High School Athletic Association Division II State Championship trophy after the Lunas rallied to beat the Kapaa Warriors on Saturday.
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Lahainaluna’s Derek Perez skipped into the end zone for a score, leaving dejected Kapaa players behind during Saturday’s D-II championship at Aloha Stadium.
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Lahainaluna’s Nainoa Irish got around Kapaa’s Raphee Khae-Chawat during the second half.
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Lahainaluna co-head coach Robert Watson embraces his staff after Saturday’s D-II championship.
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Lahainaluna’s second state championship was a testament to endurance.
The Lunas’ pursuit of a third straight title tested their resolve.
A year after outlasting Konawaena in seven overtimes, Lahainaluna overcame a 19-point deficit in the second half, then held off Kapaa to emerge with a 34-32 victory in the Division II final of the First Hawaiian Bank/HHSAA State Football Championships on Saturday at Aloha Stadium.
“It goes back to what they do in the offseason when nobody’s watching,” Lahainaluna co-head coach Garret Tihada said after the Lunas’ celebration of a third straight crown. “They put in the time, they put in the work and this is the product of it.
“When you do that for six years straight like some of our kids do, they develop that refuse-to-lose attitude, and that’s what they’ve got.”
Kapaa, seeking to bring Kauai its first state championship, controlled the game’s first 26 minutes and threatened to extend a 26-7 halftime lead early in the third quarter. But a fumble on the Lahainaluna 1-yard line shifted the momentum and the Lunas’ 99-yard drive capped by Joshua Tihada’s 1-yard plunge sparked a run of 27 unanswered points to catch and pass the Warriors.
“The biggest adjustment was just us, playing our ball,” Joshua Tihada, the coach’s nephew, said of the comeback. “ ‘Do your job,’ that’s all we said — ‘Do your job.’ Everyone was trying to do extra, and if we do our jobs we’ll all move together as one.”
Tihada, who punched in the decisive touchdown in last year’s 75-69 epic with Konawaena, ran for 152 yards and scored four touchdowns, with his third rushing score of the second half giving the Lunas the lead. Derek Perez added a 23-yard touchdown run to give the Lunas a 34-26 cushion with 4:05 left.
Kapaa, stifled for most of the second half, finally answered the run with quarterback Kahanu Davis’ third touchdown pass of the game to bring the Warriors within two with 2:17 left.
Each of Davis’ three touchdown throws was preceded by a play-action fake, and twice he rolled out to find an open receiver in the flat, including his 1-yard throw to Tyson Tranilla to give the Warriors a shot at a tying conversion.
The Lunas used their final timeout to prepare for a similar look.
“We got burned a bunch of times on that bootleg play-action, so we knew they were going to do that again,” said Garret Tihada, who shares the head coaching duties with Robert Watson. “They ran it earlier in the game and ran it again, both times successful. No reason why they shouldn’t go back to it.”
Davis initially escaped pressure and rolled to his right, but this time his throw sailed just over the fingertips of Lanakila Pagtolingan in the back of the end zone to keep Lahainaluna ahead.
The Lunas recovered an onside kick and Joshua Tihada managed to grind out a first down that allowed Lahainaluna to run out the clock.
“It’s a heartbreaker. To fight the way we fought, to start off the way we started off against this team, I was kind of dumbfounded, like ‘Wow,’ ” Kapaa coach Philip Rapozo said of his team’s dominant first half.
“These kids fought all the way until the end. We played a heck of a team. That’s three-time champions, that ain’t by accident. They’ve been in battles and they’ve come out ahead. Those guys are experienced, they’re well-coached and they’re the standard of Division II.”
Kapaa scored on all five of its possessions in the first half, with Davis throwing for two touchdowns and running for a third against a Lahainaluna defense that had surrendered just three touchdowns this season entering the final.
Kapaa kicker Chysen Lagunes-Rapozo drilled a 55-yard field goal — breaking the state tournament record of 53 previously held by Punahou’s Jet Toner — in the second quarter and closed the half with a 45-yard kick.
Kapaa running back Ryno Banasihan rushed for 153 of his game-high 197 yards in the first half, but Lahainaluna limited the Warriors to 28 yards in their first five second-half drives.
Kapaa threatened to extend its lead early in the third quarter when Kaiola Lingaton returned an interception to the Lahainaluna 7. But on second-and-goal, Lahainaluna defensive lineman Elijah Oliveira-Kalalau punched the ball out of Banasihan’s grasp at the 1 and Kaihulali Casco recovered for the Lunas to set up their rally.
“The biggest adjustment we made was the tacklers just wrapping up and just gathering to the ball,” Casco said. “In the beginning we were trying to tackle as individuals, with arm tackles, we had to surround them and strip ball.”
