Buffanblu bag sixth straight

WATER POLO

GETTING tossed into the pool after winning a championship never gets old for Punahou boys water polo coach Ken Smith.

Smith's Buffanblu made it six straight Interscholastic League of Honolulu titles and 29th overall in 32 tries as Punahou defeated Iolani 6-2 last night in the ILH championship game at Kamehameha's Kalani'opu'u Pool.

Senior Ikaika Aki scored three goals and assisted on the other three while goalie Joe Svec anchored the Punahou defense.

"To be honest, I thought it would be a lot closer," Svec said. "But I thought we had it in us to have this kind of game happen. I wasn't sure if it was going to happen but everybody stepped up."

"You get the ball to Ikaika and he finds some way to shoot it," Smith added. "We'll even give him a bad pass and he'll make something happen."

After a scoreless first quarter, Aki took over the game. He backhanded his first goal off a pass from Kai Aluli with 3:41 left in the second quarter. Iolani tied the game a minute later on Egen Atkinson's shot from the far left side of the pool.

Aki then closed out the quarter for Punahou. Aki passed the ball left to Jeeter Ishida, whose shot went in with 2:13 left. Aki then beat Atkinson for a shot with 34 seconds remaining to make it 3-1 at half.

"We started pressing and got out of our team play," Iolani coach Randy Bart said. "We had guys trying to make individual plays and that cost us at the critical times in the third quarter."