Friday, January 25, 2002
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Yesterday's boys soccer meeting between Kamehameha and Iolani at Kapiolani Park was supposed to clear up the Interscholastic League of Honolulu's championship picture. ILH title up for
grabs on final day
By Jason Kaneshiro
jkaneshiro@starbulletin.comInstead, it's more blurry than ever.
Kamehameha's Kekoa Smith punched a header into the net with about two minutes left in the match to forge a 2-2 tie with Iolani and tighten the league's title race.
"All in all it was a great game for people to watch," Iolani coach Myles Arakawa said. "It was pretty stressful for the coaches, but for the fans it was great."
The tie, coupled with Punahou's 9-0 win over Damien, created a three-way logjam at the top of the league standings. Iolani, Kamehameha and Punahou enter tomorrow's regular season finales at 8-1-2.
Punahou hosts Kamehameha at 1 p.m. tomorrow, while Iolani takes on St. Louis at the Crusaders' field. If there is a tie for first place after those matches, an ILH championship game will be played Thursday at Kapiolani Park.
The ILH champion earns an automatic berth into the state tournament. The runner-up faces a play-in game with the second-place team from the Maui Interscholastic League on Feb. 2.
"I wish all three teams could get into states," Kamehameha coach Andrew Ah New said.
Kamehameha controlled the action for much of the match as the Raiders were still recovering from their match with Punahou on Tuesday, which they won 2-1.
"Take nothing away from Kamehameha, they wanted it just as much as we did," Arakawa said. "But they had a bye and we had Punahou. They could prepare for us and all we could do was heal."
The Warriors struck first in yesterday's match as Alika Ah New, the coach's son, took an assist from David Gualdarama and booted it into the goal to give Kamehameha a 1-0 lead at the 20-minute mark of the first half.
Iolani tied it 14 minutes later when Duke Hashimoto, the ILH's leading scorer, snuck the ball past Kamehameha goalkeeper Zachary McAngus.
"Our goal was to stop them from scoring early," Andrew Ah New said. "We scored first and (the Raiders) came back like the champions that they are."
The Raiders then took the lead at the 17-minute mark of the second half. Hashimoto, attacking from the right side, took a shot, but McAngus deflected it. The ball landed in front of Eaton O'Neill, who knocked it into the net to give Iolani a 2-1 lead.
Kamehameha kept the pressure on the Raiders for much of the second half, but were repeatedly turned away by the Raider defense.
With the seconds slipping away, it appeared the Raiders would escape with the win when Smith took a pass from Brandon Tario and scored the tying goal.
"Everybody was pushing hard to score that last goal," Smith said. "Brandon Tario gave a nice cross and I put my head on it and (put it) into the back of the net.
"The plan was just to keep on shooting, so sooner or later one is supposed to go in. Luckily it was mine."
St. Louis 1, Mid-Pacific 0
Goal -- St. Louis: Dom Jovanni Cueve.Punahou 9, Damien 0
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