There is no cheering in a BIIF press box. No favorites.
However, when a Big Island team welcomes a school from another island, the lines can be blurred. Leaning toward the home team prevailing only becomes natural.
The goal is always to be fair to all parties, and we’re never going to disparage a visiting high school team, but for me it becomes a matter of balancing professional interests against that which is most interesting and engaging to your readers in a tight-knit community. When your task is to write a story from one team’s point of view, win or lose, who wouldn’t want to write about the Big Island winner?
The same rule applies to UHH athletics. The stories just seem fresher and more fun when the Vulcans win. After all, who here wants to read at length about Point Loma and its red-hot shooting guard?
With that in mind, let’s continue looking back at some of the most memorable sporting events that yours truly has been privileged enough to cover during the past 10-plus years.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012: Campbell-Hilo baseball
Trust me when I say that Tony De Sa did not enjoy fulfilling all the roles that being the baseball coach at Hilo High entailed from 2011-18. But you could tell he enjoyed reliving the details of his team’s persistence in this state tournament play-in game at Wong Stadium.
This was Waiakea’s year through and through, though the Vikings had a lot of fun during one afternoon thanks to an epic two-out rally.
“I don’t think they were most talented team I had, but we had the heart, strong heart,” De Sa said Tuesday. “We had good leaders.”
One was named Koa Matson.
“After 2011, the week we got back from states, we started training already, this group really wanted to get it going,” De Sa said. “Because we were far behind Waiakea on paper. Look at us on paper, we were nothing compared to Waiakea. We needed to work just to keep pace with them.”
Hilo absorbed three losses to Waiakea in 2012, including 3-1 in the BIIF Division I championship game as Quintin Torres-Costa tossed a five-hitter. This Warriors’ squad remains the last to secure BIIF D-I repeat.
The Vikings headed back to Wong four days later to try and secure a state berth against the Sabers of the Oahu Interscholastic. The teams met a few months earlier at the Costales tournament, where Campbell won 18-15.
Thanks to Kian Kurokawa, Hilo was winning a pitcher’s duel 2-1 and had the Sabers down to their last strike in the rematch when all of the Vikings’ aforementioned hard work nearly went to waste. A soft double scored two runs and a single added two more as Hilo suddenly trailed 5-2.
The first two Hilo batters in the bottom of the seventh were retired when Matson strode to the plate in what was possibly his last high school at-bat.
“He hits a double,” De Sa said, “and he goes crazy at second base trying to get everyone going because we were kind of dead at the time.
“He kind of willed our team to victory. After getting on base, he got everything going.”
But first, much to his coach’s surprise, Matson stole third.
“That wasn’t to my pleasure,” De Sa said.
“What are you doing?”
“That’s OK coach, I had ‘em, I had ‘em.”
“Thank goodness, you get ‘em”
Yes, Hilo had ‘em all right.
Matson was the first of five batters to reach base, followed by Jodd Carter, Micah Kaaukai, Tyler Higa-Gonsalves and Elijah Cruz, and Hilo stormed the field to celebrate a 6-5 victory.
“That’s the craziest two-out rally I’ve ever … Oh my God,” Matson said after the game. “This just makes us all believe that anything is possible. Makes us even more hungry to keep winning and keep the season going.”
It was Higa-Gonsalves who delivered the tying hit.
“I knew we would come back and wouldn’t give up,” Higa-Gonsalves said. “I was thinking of putting the ball in play to score the runs and was hoping for the best.”
Cruz’s celebration-inducing Texas leaguer looked a lot like the hit that had put Hilo in a hole in the top of the inning.
“I always have confidence in my team,” Cruz said. “He was throwing a lot of fastballs, so I was looking fastball and I just took my time looking at the pitch and went with it on the outside.”
“To to see the boys dig down into themselves, that was a coach’s dream,” DeSa said.
While Matson, Higa-Gonsalves and Cruz were the heroes, the two most prominent members of this team were Carter, then a sophomore and now member of the Cleveland Indians organization, and future University of Hawaii baseball player Chayce Ka’aua. The Vikings would win two more games at the state tournament, defeating top-seeded Kailua in the quarterfinals before losing to Baldwin in the semifinals and finishing third.
Waiakea, with three future pros (Torres-Costa, Kean Wong and Kodi Medeiros) remained untouchable, downing Baldwin to become first non-Oahu team to win the D-I title.
“They were stacked,” De Sa said.
The Vikings held their own during his tenure, winning BIIF titles in 2013, ‘15 and ‘17.
“I remember a lot of games,” De Sa said, “but (that state play-in game) stands out for a lot of reasons. We had faith all the way to the end.”