The Hawaii High School Athletic Association will introduce two new state tournaments this weekend as canoe paddling and cheerleading make their debuts. Cheerleading and canoe
paddling make state debutsBy Jason Kaneshiro
jkaneshiro@starbulletin.comThe inaugural Hawaiian Canoe Racing Association State Canoe Paddling Championships open Friday at Keehi Lagoon. A total of 72 crews are scheduled to compete for boys, girls and mixed championships.
The top eight qualifiers in each event advance to Saturday's finals at 8:30 a.m. All races will cover a half-mile.
The Local Motion State Cheerleading Championships are 4 p.m. Sunday at the Stan Sheriff Center.
Titles will be awarded in medium (11 members or fewer) and large (12 to 18 members) team categories. A total of 18 squads are scheduled to compete.
Kamehameha won the Interscholastic League of Honolulu championship at Kekuhaupio Gym last Sunday. Punahou finished second and Iolani came in third.
Moanalua captured the Oahu Interscholastic Association title Monday night at the Stan Sheriff Center. Aiea and Mililani finished second and third.
Keeping score: As part of its title sponsorship of the state wrestling championships, Data House has donated two wrestling scoreboards to the HHSAA.
The three-sided electronic scoreboards valued at $4,000 each were given to the HHSAA by Data House chairman Dan Arita. In past years, flip cards were used to display the match scores.
"If you were sitting in the upper level, you couldn't tell what the score was," HHSAA executive director Keith Amemiya said. "Now the score and time can be seen anywhere in the arena."
The Data House State Wrestling Championship runs Friday and Saturday at Blaisdell Arena. The HHSAA will also borrow scoreboards from Kamehameha and Punahou for the tournament.
Wrestling and cheerleading on the air: Hawaii Sports Network announced it will televise the state wrestling and cheerleading championships on a delayed basis on KFVE-TV.
Both championships will be broadcast March 17. The wrestling finals will air at 3:30 p.m., with the cheerleading competition to follow at 5 p.m.
The doctor is in: After guiding the Iolani basketball team to victory over Mililani in the semifinals of the state tournament last Friday, coach Mark Mugiishi had more on his mind than preparing a game plan for the championship game.
Mugiishi, a general surgeon at Central Medical Clinic, was in the operating room at 9:30 the next morning to remove a patient's thyroid tumor.
Only after completing the three-hour procedure, did Mugiishi's thoughts turn toward facing Kalaheo for the state title eight hours later.
"When I'm in surgery, I'm concentrating on that 100 percent. I'm not thinking about basketball," Mugiishi said. "And when I'm coaching, I'm not thinking about surgery."
That night, Mugiishi watched Iolani sophomore Derrick Low slice through the Mustang defense for 33 points en route to a 58-57 win.
The victory gave Mugiishi his third state championship at Iolani. Two of his championship game wins were decided by a single point, the other went to double-overtime.
"Basketball does stress me out more than surgery," Mugiishi said. "In surgery, I have total control over what I'm doing. In basketball, all I can do is watch these 16 or 17-year-olds run around and God knows what they're going to do."
Mugiishi, a professor of surgery at the University of Hawaii medical school, often mixes basketball and medicine. He said he schedules most of his surgeries for Saturdays.
"I appreciate my patients and my nurses for being so accommodating so I can do the two things I love to do and make sure they can coexist," he said.
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