It wasn’t just that Hilo’s Mehana Sabado-Halpern won every BIIF cross-country race she entered last season, but she never took a break from, entering every race on the schedule.
By season’s end, the results became all too predictable.
“You’d always like to see somebody give somebody a hard time,” Vikings coach Bill McMahon said.
With Sabado-Halpern out of the way – she’s attending Linfield College in Oregon and plans to compete in track and field – everyone gets a fresh start at the season-opener Saturday in Waimea.
“It feels different,” Hawaii Prep girls coach Kimo Higgins said. “It feels like we might slip someone in to win it. I don’t know who that might be. That’s left to be determined.”
On paper and in many of the coaches’ minds, the favorite is Waiakea junior Saya Yabe, the highest returning runner (fourth) from BIIFs last season.
Even so, McMahon expects drama to return to Big Island courses this season.
“I don’t think Saya is going to walk away with this,” he said. “There are girls who will give her hard rubs.”
Led by sophomore Ada Benson, Ka Makani have at last three or four capable runners as they try to keep their stranglehold on the team title. Consider this when taking into account HPA’s depth: sophomore Zoe McGinnis finished 11th at the BIIF championships last season, yet she barely was a point-scorer for HPA because she was fifth on her own team. No other school placed two runners in the top 15, but HPA had seven.
While four of those runners return this year – Benson, sophomore Tove Fostvedt and Savannah Cochran were Nos. 5-7 at BIIFs – Higgins says he has the same worry as every other coach in the league.
“I’m very curious about No. 5,” he said. “My honest assessment, we’ve got four strong and a big question mark about No. 5. And you can’t win without five.”
One candidate is freshman Zoe Ganley, who teamed with Fostvedt to finish fifth at the preseason Canefire Conditioner relay, which was won by Benson and McGinnis, who finished almost 19 seconds ahead of the Waiakea tandem of Yabe and Jodi Go.
With Louie Ondo the overwhelming favorite on the boys side, Yabe has a chance to give Waiakea double gold this season.
“She’ll be up there,” Waiakea coach Jordan Rosado said. “She ran with the HPA girls, and they are really hard to beat.”
The conditioner is considered a better indicator of depth more so than how individuals will fare in 3-mile races. Kamehameha saw encouraging results, challenging Hawaii Prep behind third -and fourth-place finishes by Aubrey-Michele Carter and Nevaeh Fukui-Stoos and Maria Fratinardo and Joey-Ann Cootey.
Kealakehe finished second in the team race last season but lost five of its seven runners. One off the Waveriders’ leading returner is sophomore Xochitl Reyes.
“She’s got some ambition,” coach Brad Lachance said.
The same could be said of Kohala’s Yuki Zbytovsky and Pahoa’s Stella Javier, both of whom finished in the top 10 at BIIFs in 2014.
Javier placed second in her division at the junior lifeguard state championships this summer, but she’s recovering from a wrist injury and won’t participate in the opener.
“She is ready to go once her cast is off,” Daggers coach Patrick Baker said.