HILO – If this was the second season for the Waiakea softball team, Coach Bo Saiki had an uncomfortable feeling early on Friday afternoon that it was starting just like the regular season began.
After Kealakehe had batted twice in the first game of a their BIIF Division I semifinal doubleheader, the fourth-seeded Waveriders were comfortably ahead 5-0, rekindling memories of the way the season opened for the Warriors.
It all worked out for top-seeded Waiakea which managed a come-from-behind 14-13 victory in the first game and then played more like the Warriors have of late with a 19-11 win that eliminated Kealakehe and sends Waiakea to Kailua-Kona next Friday to meet Keaau for the division championship.
“It seemed like we finally got the bad stuff out of our system,” Saiki said. “That first game had me wondering, it was like a replay of some of those first games we had this year, and that wasn’t so good to think about.”
The win was the eighth in a row for the Warriors who opened the season with an agonizing 4-3 loss at Kealakehe that ended with a disputed call on a ground rule home run. Before they knew it, Waiakea was 1-3 and headed in the wrong direction, but now, at 9-3 headed to the title game, eight wins in a row hardly seems enough.
“We all remembered that first game,” said catcher Taylor Nishimura. “We have really improved, just about all season long after that bad start and this was kind of like a chance for us to prove to ourselves and our coaches we’re better than the way we played early.
“We talked about losing to them and everybody was really ready for this,” she said.
That would include Nishimura who opened the second game in the leadoff position with a long home run to the opposite field in left that got the Warriors going early.
Four walks, two batters hit by pitches and one error combined to give the Waveriders four runs in the third inning to tie the second game, but Waiakea had the favor returned in the fifth when it scored eight runs on two singles and three of Kealakehe’s five errors in the game for a 12-4 lead that opened the gates to the championship series next week.
In the deciding second game, Nishimura had a home run, a single, two bases on balls, scored four runs and had the one RBI. Center fielder Tierra Teves drove in three runs with a home run and drew a base on balls as well.
Kealakehe’s Luisa Singh provided some hope for the Waveriders (5-7) in the fifth when she crushed a three-run home run to make it 12-7, but the Warriors added five more in the sixth. Kealakehe prevented a 10-run rule defeat with two in the sixth to make it 18-9, but they ran out of hits after that.