Kamehameha-Hawaii's Micah Kanehailua threw for 190 yards and 3 touchdowns in a win over Nanakuli. Brien Ing | SL

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Kamehameha-Hawaii's Bayley Manliguis celebrates with teammate Kaeo Batacan after a score in the first half. Brien Ing | SL

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Sat, Nov 8, 2014 @ KS-Hawaii [ 3:00 pm ]

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Nanakuli

20

KS-Hawaii

42

Final	1	2	3	4	T
Nanakuli (10-1-0)	13	7	0	0	20
KS-Hawaii (8-3-0)	21	7	0	14	42

• Pass
• Rush
• Rec

Micah Kanehailua 190 yd 3 TD

Kale Kanehailua 115 yd

Kaeo Batacan 87 yd 2 TD

Makaila Haina-Horswill 149 yd 3 TD

Bayley Manliguis 82 yd 2 TD

Isain Wong 62 yd

KEAAU, Hawaii — A fast start and a steady downpour was all Kamehameha-Hawaii needed Saturday afternoon.

Micah Kanehailua passed for 190 yards and three touchdowns, including two to Bayley Manliguis, and Kaeo Batacan added a pair of rushing scores to help the Warriors beat Nanakuli, 42-20, in first round game of the First Hawaiian Bank/Hawaii High School Athletic Association Division II Football State Championships

A crowd of about 1,800 fans at the Warriors' Paiea Stadium witnessed the Big Island Interscholastic Federation champions pick up their first-ever state-tournament win. It was their fifth consecutive win to improve to 8-2 and secured their spot in next weekend's semifinal round.

Kamehameha-Hawaii will play top-seeded and top-ranked Lahainaluna in a 6 p.m. game Saturday at Wailuku's War Memorial Stadium.

"This one feels amazing," Kanehailua said. "We've been working for this since last year when we were knocked off in the BIIF playoffs and it just feels really good."

After Nanakuli marched 66 yards in seven plays on its opening possession of the game to take an early 6-0 lead, Kanehailua got Kamehameha-Hawaii rolling offensively. His 5-yard touchdown run tied it at 6 and Grant Shiroma's ensuing extra point gave his team the lead for good.

Nanakuli turned it over two drives later when quarterback Kale Kanehailua was intercepted by Kamehameha-Hawaii's Preston Kalai. Three plays later, Micah Kanehailua — Kale's cousin — recycled the turnover into a 33-yard touchdown pass to Malinguis to make the score 14-6.

The Golden Hawks pulled within 14-13 on Makaila Haina-Horswill's second of three rushing touchdowns in the game, but Batacan scored on a 15-yard run on the penultimate play of the first quarter and found the end zone again on a 9-yard run minutes into the second quarter. Kalai converted both PATs to extend Nanakuli's lead to 28-13.

"We ran the ball pretty good, we were marching it down, we got a couple of nice catches from Bayley and it just opened up our running game," said Batacan, who pointed out the importance of ball control in the soggy conditiongs. "It was very important because turnovers are crucial and we just have to take care of the ball and thanks to the O line. Without them, I'm nothing."

Late in the second quarter, Haina-Horswill broke loose for a 83-yard touchdown run down the right sideline. Clifford Cunningham tacked on the extra point to cut the Warriors' lead to 28-20 and made it a one-possession game.

However, Kanehailua put the game out of reach with a pair of touchdown passes in a span of 67 seconds in the fourth quarter. He hooked up with Shiroma for a 41-yard score and after Caleb Baptiste recovered a Haina-Horswill fumble on the ensuing possession, Kanehailua connected with Manliguis for a 15-yard touchdown to close out the scoring.

"A lot of the receivers have known Micah for a long time," Manliguis said of Kanehailua, the third-year starting quarter. "We all just have that chemistry together."

Haina-Horswill rushed for a game-high 149 yards on 19 carries and scored all of Nanakuli's touchdowns, but was his production decline in the second half. He carried 11 times for 138 yards before halftime, but managed just 11 yards on his final eight carries.

"We went in really wanting to stop the run," Kamehameha coach Dan Lyons said of the Golden Hawks. "They have a really dynamic running back, they have a dynamic quarterback, but we felt if we could just take away one thing we're going to be better, so I thought we did a good job of stuffing the run and then that made it difficult for them."

The wet weather hindered Nanakuli's offense for much of the final two quarters, which saw three fumbles lost by the visitors.

"It's definitely tough to come back from that early deficit, coupled with the weather," Golden Hawks' coach Keala Watson said. "We are known as a second-half team — people call us that every time — but I guess it just wasn't there today. We made a lot of mistakes, things that we need to improve on, but it's a learning experience."

Lyons said familiarity with the Nanakuli offense — which utilizes the same spread formations as the Warriors — proved to be beneficial.

We have a lot of faith in our defensive backs and the beauty of it is (Nanakuli) does a lot of stuff similar to what we do, so our defense sees that everyday and I think that was huge for us because we could make some adjustments and we got some big plays from guys."

The Warriors were making their first state-tournament appearance since 2010, when it lost to Kaimuki in the first round.

"We start off talking about history and talk about doing historic things," Lyons said. "We've talked about it in the beginning of the season, we talked about it before the game today and we talked about it after the game that we want to be able to compete at any level and in order to do that we had to be historic and we were tonight."

Kamehameha-Hawaii, which is ranked sixth in the ScoringLive/OC16 Division II Power Rankings, joins Hawaii Prep as the only BIIF schools to win a state-tournament game.

Fourth-ranked Nanakuli saw its season end at 10-1.