Punahou rallies late to defeat Kamehameha, 5-3

Punahou's Niko Takayesu turns a double play to secure Punahou's victory. Evan Asato | SL

Punahou and Kamehameha opened up their ILH regular season campaigns in a game that was deadlocked until the last frame, with the Buffablu coming away with a 5-3 victory on a Tuesday afternoon at Central O'ahu Regional Park.

Punahou had just come back from a tournament on Maui, where they won two and tied their three pre-season games there, and the preseason experience showed.

"We just knew that we had to execute better, we preach execution if its pitching, offense, or defense. Up in Maui we had to scramble for runs, so we bunted a lot, we hit a lot, we ran a lot, and we stole a lot of bases, and relied on our defense." said Coach Kenny Harrison.

At the top of the 7th inning, with the score tied at 3-all, Kamehameha walked senior Jason Rosen, then junior Aaron Fong put down a sacrifice bunt to advance Rosen to second.

Reese Kato then stepped up and laid down another nice bunt and made it safely to first, advancing Rosen to second.

Beau Branton followed with a ground rule double over the left field fence, scoring Rosen, putting Kato on third.

"I was just seeing the ball well, I had four good at-bats, and on the last one I just saw an off-speed pitch and hit it," said Branton talking about his game winning ground rule double in the top of the seventh inning. "We gotta keep working hard, it's not over, it's just the first game. We've gotta learn how to hit the ball better and just keep playing how we've been playing."

The Buffanblu's next batter, Niko Takayesu, got hit by a pitch and with the bases loaded, KJ Harrison stepped up to the plate.

Harrison hit a deep flyball into the outfield, allowing Kato to tag up and score, putting the Buffanblu up 5-3.
In the bottom of the last frame, Kamehameha's Codie Paiva flied out to right where Jake Fujimoto squeezed the first out.

Then with a runner on first, a ground ball was hit to second baseman Takayesu, who fielded the ball, tagged the runner and gunned down the runner at first for the double play that sealed the victory.

Punahou's defense battled through the first six innings against a very aggressive Kamehameha batting order.

"The defense hung in there. We had guys playing defense – a couple errors here and there, but this team is real resilient, we got the confidence that is gonna make the plays and we preach to them that mistakes are gonna happen but we gotta come back hard from them." said Harrison.

Cole Kanazawa came on in relief of starter Bo Coolen and earned the victory, scattering 3 hits in 3 innings of work.

Branton hit safely in three of his four at-bats, and was the only player to garner more than one hit in the contest.

"It's a huge win for us today. Kamehameha is a great team, they threw their best and we hung in there. It's a huge start for us coming off from last season. We worked the count well, bunting and base running especially." said Harrison.