HILO – Kealakehe brought just enough pitching to the party to keep it reasonably close, but that aside, the BIIF Division I baseball semifinals once again served as mere preliminaries.
No surprise, Waiakea and Hilo are on to the final.
Eager to get ready for a best-of-three championship that starts Friday at Wong Stadium, neither rival wasted much time Saturday.
Shortly after the Warriors put away Keaau 13-1 on their home field in a five-inning TKO that lasted approximately 70 minutes, just up the road on Kawili Street at UH-Hilo, the Vikings finished off the Waveriders 8-1.
“I just hope that we get to put everything together for the next few weeks and play our best baseball at the end of the season,” said Vikings coach Tony De Sa, whose team’s only two BIIF loses this season came against Waiakea.
While De Sa saw signs that Hilo (12-2) was starting to hit up to its standards, the Warriors (14-0) packed enough offense into one inning to please any coach, scoring 11 times in the top of the first, capped by inside-the-park home runs by Gehrig Octavio and Khaden Victorino.
“Keaau has great coaches, and we know if we let them hang around they’ll find a way to win,” Rory Inouye said. “That’s always the mindset going in to Keaau.”
You know a coach has it good when he has the luxury of penciling a hitter as good as Octavio into the No. 7 spot in the lineup.
Casey Yamauchi, Nathan Minami and Jacob Igawa started the inning off with hard hits up the middle, Makoa Andres served a hit to right, and then the Warriors turned it up a notch. Winning pitcher David Nakamura hammered a two-run triple to center, and then Octavio and Victorino did their teammate one better with homers.
‘The bats were going, and that was comforting,” Inouye said. “I know we’re going to be facing tough pitching. Hilo High has great pitching.
“David has been swinging the bat really well and Makoa, too. One through seven, one through eight, they all have their strengths.”
Yamauchi, Minami and Igawa each accounted for two of the Warriors’ 16 hits. Nakamura hit a batter but was otherwise perfect through three innings with four strikeouts. Jamieson Hirayama worked the final two innings.
Inouye’s biggest in-house concern heading to the championship?
“It’s a long season, just keeping them mentally focused,” he said. “Just being good teammates to each other. As coaches, we preach to be good teammates and pick each other up.”
The young Cougars (4-10) will lose just two seniors, including Anson Kauwe, who finished with a hit and pitched four 2/3 innings in relief of Bryant Respicio-Mercado, who collected Keaau’s other hit.
Across the way, Toa Barclay pitched five strong innings and Micah Bello flourished from the leadoff spot for Hilo, socking a double and a triple and going 3-for-3 day with three runs scored.
After facing crafty Waveriders left-hander Makana Kaluau in a 5-0 win in Game 1, the Vikings were glad to go up against a harder thrower in Eli Lai, and they responded with 12 hits – every starter has at least one.
“Their pitcher is pretty good,” De Sa said. “We needed to see something like this. This is good for us.”
Bello tripled to left to lead off the game and scored on Stone Miyao’s single to center. In the second, Bello doubled with one out and came around to score on a wild pitch, and Nick Antony’s double plated Joey Jarneski, who walked with two outs.
Ahead 4-0, two walks set the table for Hilo’s four-run sixth, which chased Lai and was highlighted by Jarneski’s two-run single, and an RBI triple by Antony, who scored on Ocean Gabonia’s double.
Barclay allowed only three hits – two to Tupu Toafili – with a strikeout and no walks, Ryan Ragual struck out a batter in a perfect sixth and the Waveriders (6-8) used a hit batter and a two-out error to scratch for their first run of the series off ace Jarneski in the seventh.
With Barclay, Donald Saltiban and others in the pitching mix, De Sa said he’d wait a while before announcing how he plans to use Jarneski in the championship series.
“I have a lot of guys,” he said. “A lot of pitchers who can do the job.”