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PUNAHOU RELAYS
Track season heats upWith the league championships just
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The Punahou Relays don't involve team scores, per se, but the slew of relay and field events were highly competitive. So was the power relay event, a 6x67 race for runners weighing at least 200 pounds. Kahuku won with a time of 47.66, more than a second off the record. The team was comprised of Al Afalava, Byron Beatty, Kevin Unga, Devin Unga and anchor Micah Strickland. The team was short one runner and borrowed B.J. Fruean from Leilehua.
Chad Miyamoto won the 100-meter race, dubbed as the "Hawaii's Fastest Human" event, with a time of 10.95 seconds. Ryan Keomaka was a close second at 10.97 and Kelsey Nakanelua was third at 11.07.
Careena Onosai and Keani Santos continued their footholds on the top two distances statewide in the girls discus. Onosai dealt with plenty this weekend.
By the time she threw her discus 130 feet, 11 inches to win the event, it was just 12 hours after she was at her prom.
"It was really hot today. I was tired," said Onosai, who had 60 Division I scholarship offers in track and field, as well as volleyball. She turned them down and will walk on at the University of Hawaii to play volleyball in the fall of 2006.
Despite the mid-80s temperature and just a tiny bit of breeze, Onosai was 6 feet off her personal best.
"I just tried to focus on the technique my dad told me," she said. Onosai also won the shot put with a heave of 39-8.
Santos, a senior, tossed her discus 118-9.
"These last three weeks, I've been in a slump since I got sick," she said. "I slept 14 hours yesterday."
Some notable individuals in the girls discus didn't enter yesterday, including Aiea's Konae Purcell.
"Konae is going to her prom," Santos said.
Purcell wound up making it to the meet to place second in the shot put.
A pair of Punahou underclassmen led the girls high jump competition. Caroline Ritson, a 5-foot-10 sophomore, cleared 5 feet to win. Her teammate, Alexa Untermann, placed second with a jump of 4-10.
"I'd be doing worse without her," Ritson said of Untermann. "She's a freshman and she's beaten me before. I get happy-slash-jealous."
Untermann and Ritson competed at the junior-varsity level this season, but have qualified for states.
"You get to see everyone else improve. You see their mistakes and learn from them," Untermann said of her first season of high school track and field.
Punahou also won the boys sprint medley in 3:37.86, with Jesse Brown and Peter Deptula closing out the victory by a wide margin. Brown, a senior, ran the 400 leg, and Deptula, a junior, finished with the 800 leg. The two have worked together on relay teams before.
"It's usually him passing the baton to me," Brown said. "Today was a good chance to see the OIA guys. A lot of good teams showed up today."
False start: Apparently, Charles Fasi isn't the first Iolani pole vaulter to clear 14 feet, despite the recollection of longtime coach Earl Hedani. A story in Thursday's Star-Bulletin quoted Hedani, who has coached for 35 years, saying Fasi was the only one.
However, in 1999, Brad Chun and Chris Yamashita both cleared 14 feet at the state championships. In fact, according to Joel Flores, the Punahou Relays record is 15 feet, set by Eric Chang of Iolani in 1996.
Flores is the Hawaii chairman of the USATF Pole Vault Development and Education committee.