Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Tuesday, May 25, 1999

Molokai title
reason to feel good

MOLOKAI winning the state high school baseball championship is such a feel-good sports story - clearly the best of the year so far.

And we're not just talking about how the students at Molokai High School or the Friendly Island folks are feeling. We're talking feel good by everybody.

Of course, the good people of Molokai are the giddiest over what their high school baseball team accomplished last Friday.

"Winning the state championship didn't make just the students proud. It made the whole island proud," said Sarah Kalani, the school's fourth-year principal.

The school held a 45-minute assembly yesterday morning, honoring the 16 players and team manager on the state championship team.

"It was a wonderful assembly. Winning the championship was a nice shot in the arm for the school and the community," said Molokai athletic director Elden Esmeralda.

The victory touched everybody, according to Esmeralda.

During his stay on Oahu last week, he was stopped and asked by people who saw his Molokai shirt, "Hey, you from the school? Terrific."

Terrific is the word.

A small island, a smaller community enjoying the bragging rights to the best high school baseball team in the state.

A baseball team that brought the school with an enrollment of 840 students (grades 7 through 12) its first state title in any sport.

WITH two freshmen pitchers - Ikaika Lester and Keahi Rawlins - beating the state's best, including private school baseball powers Mid-Pacific and Iolani.

It was no fluke, according to Ken Nakayama, Molokai's baseball coach for 25 years.

Nakayama, a 1959 Kahuku High School alumnus who lettered in football and baseball, told the assembled student body the reason their team won the state title:

"We worked hard and were disciplined. And the players all had respect for each other."

"This is the first time for the island of Molokai. This is for the whole island. All Molokai is family," Nakayama had said after his team defeated Mid-Pac, 6-2, in the championship final.

No one knows more about Molokai's ohana than Nakayama, who went to Molokai as a teacher, met and married a Molokai girl, Dawn Apana, and together raised five children.

His oldest son, Pat, played for him and is now an assistant coach. His youngest son, Apana, is the Farmers' catcher.

WITH only three players graduating and the 6-foot-2 Rawlins and 6-foot Lester returning, you'd think Nakayama would feel good about his chances of repeating next year.

Not necessarily.

He wouldn't be surprised if Honolulu private schools send out recruiting feelers to his strapping young pitchers. But he feels Molokai's ties will prove strong.

"There's something special about the lifestyle on Molokai," he said. "And the Rawlins family, they bleed green and white."

Of more immediate concern is the high cost of operating an athletic program at Molokai High, whose teams fly, not bus, to road games.

Scary as it sounds, Nakayama had some doubts whether there was enough money to send the baseball team to Honolulu for the state tournament. It was touch and go, he said.

Esmeralda faces a Solomonic decision next year if budget constraints continue.

"We may have to cut a sport or two," said Esmeralda, who hopes to prevent that from happening by seeking financial aid from Oahu foundations. "I hope OHA helps. Three-fourths of our kids are Hawaiian."