Not only did Kihei Kapeliela help deliver the first state championship in Kohala High School history (along with three more), he put Big Island boys basketball back on the map.
A golden era of Hawaii Island prep hoops history officially came to a close April 11, as the 2025-26 Kohala boys basketball team celebrated their fourth Division II state title in six seasons at Keokea Beach Park. The championship celebration banquet almost seemed like a regular occasion at this point.
Laughs were exchanged, memories were revisited, leis covered the coaching staff’s white buttoned-up shirts while the players proudly bestowed their HHSAA championship medals around their necks.
The soon-to-be-raised fourth banner was mounted high on the wall in perfect view — with the four Koa Head trophies displayed on a table scattered with signed basketballs, cut-down nets, conference championship plaques, team pictures and newspaper articles from throughout the season. The Cowboys had done it again.
While the night was celebratory, it was also bittersweet — as the head coach Kapeliela and his staff of Reeve Cazimero, Paul Antonio, Elijah Antonio and Robin Marquez closed the book on one of the great dynasties in Big Island prep sports history. They would be officially stepping down, opening the gates to a new era of Cowboys basketball.
“We put in some years,” a humbled Kapeliela told the paper in an interview last week. Kapeliela previously served as a varsity assistant and head JV coach for 13 years before taking charge of the varsity program. “It was a good time to step away.”
Ever since Kapeliela took the reins as the Cowboys head coach in the fall of 2019, North Hawaii basketball was quite never the same. In his first year at the helm, Kapeliela and the Cowboys were just trying to prove themselves to the outer islands. Small Big Island schools like Pahoa, Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Laupahoehoe and St. Joseph’s had won state titles, but Kohala had never won one. In fact, the Cowboys’ athletics program had never raised a state banner in the school’s near 100-year history.
“We didn’t go into that season thinking of a state championship,” Kapeliela recalled. “We were just taking it one game at a time, see what happens.”
The standard of Kohala basketball forever changed once the Cowboys took the 2019-20 HHSAA Division-II tournament by storm — upsetting third-seeded Kauai in the quarterfinals, ripping through McKinley in the semis and then edging a Roosevelt team that upset top overall seed HPA the round prior. The Cowboys didn’t even win the BIIF championship that year.
“That first state championship for our school and community was huge,” Kapeliela said.
The win marked the first state championship from a BIIF team since 2013-14 (HPA), shining light on Big Island boys basketball once again. Prior to that, Pahoa was the last champ from the Big Island (2009-10).
Since Division II was introduced to HHSAA boys basketball in 2006-07, that section of the state had been previously dominated by ILH and OIA schools claiming the championships. Hawaii Island was starving for more basketball glory, but the question remained whether the Cowboys could keep delivering.
That first Kohala title core of O’Shen Cazimero, Molonai Emeliano and La‘akea Kauka set high expectations for the next great teams that followed. Future key pieces such as Layden Kauka, Landon Kauka, Jayden Hook, Isaac Salvador-Libron, Hezekiah Wilson and Estavon Morales had a lot to live up to, but Kapeliela’s air-tight system and instillment of belief in his players not only proved that the Cowboys’ first championship wasn’t just a one-off, but that they were here to stay.
“(After winning in 2020), state championships is all we talked about,” Kapeliela said.
The next three titles were led by Kapeliela and guard Layden Kauka, who is the youngest of Lawrence Kauka’s four sons. Lawrence played for Kohala in the 1980s, and is remembered as one of the top scorers in school history.
La‘akea Kauka played at Rome City Institute (Italy) for two years after helping raise the Cowboys’ first banner, while Landon Kauka currently plays for Northwest Indian College (Ind.) after winning two state rings. While the brothers were all skilled, Layden’s talent was different.
Layden is a 6-foot-1, rangy athlete that sets the tone on both ends of the floor. He can score from all three levels, make plays for his teammates and lock up the opposing team’s best player. Kauka’s talent was glaring from the day he got to high school ball — even the casual basketball fan could recognize that he was different from the rest of the players on the court.
During Kauka’s freshman season in 2022-23, he sank the game-winning jumper against University Lab School with 19 seconds remaining to clinch state championship No. 2 for the program. He averaged nearly 16 points per game that season, winning his first of three ScoringLive Player of the Year awards. The next year, Kauka was scoring over 21 points a game and sank another state-winning jumpshot with seconds remaining in the 2024 HHSAA DII championship — this time against Seabury Hall in overtime.
By the fourth championship in 2025-26, Kapeliela, and the Cowboys were inevitable. Kauka had since returned from a brief stint at Utah Prep, where he challenged himself by playing alongside some of the most talented players in the country — such as future NBA lottery pick AJ Dybantsa of BYU and Hilo native JJ Mandaquit, who recently transferred from Washington to the University of Arizona. While the experience of playing with such high-end talent was memorable for Kauka, the itch of returning to play for Kapeliela’s Cowboys was growing.
And who could blame Kauka? After all, the UH-Hilo commit consistently credits Kapeliela for helping him grow into the player he is today.
“He’s not just my coach, but also my uncle,” the senior Kauka said. “And we’ve built a great relationship both on and off the court. I’m very thankful for him.”
With Kauka fully back in the mix, Kohala rolled in Kapeliela’s last season — finishing a perfect 12-0 against the BIIF and 25-4 overall, closing the season with 14 straight wins. Flying under the radar during their first state run, the Cowboys were well-respected across the islands by 2026, entering the HHSAA DII tournament as the No. 1 seed and prohibitive favorites to raise another banner.
And raise another banner, they did. The Cowboys handled business against Kihei Charter, Damien and Seabury — winning each game by an average of 14.3 points and ringing themselves once again. Kohala’s 49-35 win against Seabury in the Feb. 13 championship was the ultimate vengeance from 2025, as the Cowboys fell narrowly to the Spartans in the semifinals.
Kauka was also playing better than he ever had, leading the state in total points and points per game (27.5). He was honored as the first Division-II hooper to be named the Star-Advertiser’s Fab 15 Player of the Year.
The win also marked another historic milestone for the program, as Kohala officially passed Hilo High for the most boys basketball state championships from a Big Island school. It took just six seasons.
“Winning four state championships and five BIIF titles in six seasons is not easy to accomplish,” Kauka said. “What (Kapeliela) has done will establish him as the greatest coach in Cowboys history.”
It’s hard to not describe the Cowboys dynasty without immediately mentioning Kapeliela. His aggressive, free-flowing system helped dozens of hungry North Hawaii boys become champions. He emphasized ball movement, speed and forcing turnovers to win the possession battles. Kapeliela credits Donn Fernandez and James Marquez for being the architects of the vaunted Cowboys’ defenses, noting that the former varsity coaches taught him the system while he was an assistant.
“Without Coach Donn and James, there wouldn’t be four state championships,” Kapeliela said. “They laid the foundation for us, and we continued to do what they taught us.”
With Kohala consistently fielding smaller teams, Kapeliela and his staff capitalized on winning the margins and running teams off the floor with athleticism. This was rooted by rigorous offseason conditioning programs to prepare their bodies for the long seasons.
The Cowboys wanted to make a point to the rest of the state — no one was going to outwork them on the floor.
“(The coaching staff and I) built relationships with the players not just during the season,” Kapeliela said. “It was a year-round commitment of getting to know them and their families. I’ll definitely miss that — every year was different in its own way.”
Kohala fosters a family-centric culture that spans generations, which is perhaps part of why the school community remains so strong. Players understand the standard once they put on their black and gold jersey, simply because they’ve known the expectation since they were young. They’ve grown up watching their older siblings or friends from the Kamehameha Park gymnasium bleachers, or heard stories about their dad or uncle playing for the Cowboys back in the day.
Basketball isn’t just a sport in small-town Kohala, it’s a way of life. Nobody did a better job of upholding that tradition than Kapeliela. He didn’t just teach his players the game at the highest level — he taught them life skills of how to be upstanding young men in the community.
“(Kapeliela) is a coach who values character and morals just as much as winning,” Kauka said. “He always kept us accountable and made sure we stayed humble and respectful to everyone — including our parents, teammates, officials, teachers and opponents. If we didn’t follow those standards, he made sure there were consequences.
“I’m very grateful for him and everything he’s done for this basketball program.”
The journey has been full-circle for Kapeliela, as he went from Cowboys sharpshooter himself in the 1990s, to a longtime varsity assistant and JV coach, to taking over the varsity program and leading his alma mater to state glory. A dream he constantly talked about with his longtime friend and assistant Reeve Cazimero, he is beyond grateful to have lived it.
“Nothing more you can ask for,” Kapeliela reflected. “Being the head coach for this team is the toughest job in town, and to have the boys buy into what we were preaching and us all believe in the same goals…that’s the thing I’ll miss.”
While a new era awaits, the Kohala faithful still have much to look forward to. The Cowboys already have young building blocks in place, such as freshmen James Wong and Sheldon “Oni” Emeliano Jr., who both started and played critical roles for the champs this past season. But the expectation will remain high for the team of the town, regardless of who leaves and stays. It’s simply the way of Kohala.
While he’s unsure if he’ll coach again, one thing will always remain true about Kapeliela’s coaching tenure — he instilled belief not only into his players and community, but across the entire island. His Cowboys helped reimagine what is possible for local athletes with big dreams, raising the standard for future generations of Big Island hoopers to come.
