Kailua overwhelms Roosevelt to secure third straight win


Kailua's Mikey Hanano connected with this pitch from Roosevelt's Cade Hedani for a grand slam in the bottom of the first inning of Wednesday's OIA Division I baseball game. Greg Yamamoto | SL

KAILUA — It took the Kailua baseball team a little bit to get going, but the Surfriders have seemingly hit their stride.

Behind a 17-hit barrage, including a couple of grand slams, Kailua battered visiting Roosevelt by a lopsided score of 21-6 in a five-inning, mercy-rule game Wednesday afternoon.

A total of 10 different players recorded at least one hit for the Surfriders, who improved their record to 3-2. The Rough Riders fell to 0-5.

Kailua has now won its last three games after an 0-2 start to the spring. It has outscored its opponents by a combined margin of 47 to 12 during its winning streak.

"For our school, we didn't get to play preseason like other schools, so I feel like we're only coming around now and we're starting to reach our potential of what this team could have been right now and it showed last week and now I think we're starting to put it together," longtime Surfriders coach Corey Ishigo said.

Ishigo's squad has been swinging a hot stick as a collective group. It picked up its first win last Wednesday in a 10-0 win (5 inn.) over Castle and three days later came a 16-6 rout of Waianae (6 inn.).

The Surfriders stayed hot Wednesday against a struggling Roosevelt team that had scored just nine runs through its first four games this season.

The disparity between the ball clubs was evident early on.

After Kailua starting pitcher Isaac Auld struck out the first two Rough Rider batters he faced and worked around a two-out walk in a scoreless top of the first, his teammates got busy on the bath paths in the bottom of the frame.

Makai Miyamoto led off with a single to left. With one out, Roosevelt starter Cade Hedani hit back-to-back Surfrider batters with a pitch to load the bases for Hanano. The left-handed Hanano cranked the first pitch he saw from Hedani over the fence in right center to clear the bases and give his team a quick 4-0 lead.

"I was hunting a fastball and I got what I could handle: fastball, in," said Hanano, a junior designated hitter. "When I hit it, it felt really good."

It was just the second hit of the season for Hanano, who had only one RBI on the year coming into the game.

"Mikey hasn't been hitting as well as he should've been this year, but he's making his adjustments and like I said, if we had a preseason to work out all these kinks in our swing … we'd love to play anybody right now," Ishigo added.

But Hanano's grand slam was just half of the damage the Surfriders did in the first. They sent a total of 12 batters to the plate and scored eight runs in the inning despite just four hits; Hedani hit four batters and walked another in the frame.

Roosevelt got on the board with a pair of unearned runs off Auld in the top of the third, but Kailua got one back in the bottom half of the inning and held a 9-2 lead after three complete.

Auld struck out three over three innings of three-hit ball before he gave way to Thomas Galdeirs-Hugo, who worked a perfect fourth inning.

The Surfriders exploded for a dozen runs in the bottom of the fourth, when the first 13 batters reached base safely. They rapped out 10 hits in the inning, including four extra-base knocks.

Kayde Iranon's two-run home run gave his team an 11-2 lead. Later in the inning, Blazen Lono-Wong belted a first-pitch offering from Roosevelt reliever Manukai Weisbarth over the right center fence for Kailua's second grand slam of the game. Iranon had an RBI-double in his second at-bat of the inning and two more runs came in on Kayleb Mahuka-Lono's two-out double to the gap in left center.

Hanano said that given the offensive production the team has experienced as of late, he expected another high-scoring game Wednesday.

"The way we hit, yeah," said Hanano, who doubled, walked and was hit by a pitch in his other plate appearances. "Yes, we did."

Hanano (four RBI, three runs scored), Lono-Wong (five RBI, three runs) and Iranon (three RBI, three runs) each homered and doubled in the win. Mahuka-Lono (three RBI, two runs) also doubled and batted 3 for 4.

Auld picked up the win, his first of the season, to even his record on the year at 1-1.

"We just wanted him to throw strikes, work ahead and give our defense a chance and he did that for the most part today," Ishigo said.

Galdeirs-Hugo walked one but did not allow a hit in 1 2/3 scoreless innings of relief.

Auld and Galdeirs-Hugo are two of the six seniors that Ishigo and the Surfriders honored for their last home game Wednesday. The others are Iranon, Mahuka-Lono, Alea Poole and Taylor Takata.

With two outs in the top of the fifth, Ishigo recognized the group by taking his seniors out of the game.

"I mean, I feel so bad for our seniors because they had a two-game season last year, this year we didn't have a chance to have a playoffs and they put in so much effort coming to this school and working their butts off to become a Surfrider and to not have a playoff at the end is pretty sad," Ishigo expressed.

Just as his team is playing its best ball, the season is on its last legs. Wednesday was the penultimate game of the abbreviated Oahu Interscholastic Association baseball season, which wraps up Saturday.

"We had a lot of fun," Hanano said. "It was for the seniors, their last (home) game."

Kailua will play Farrington (4-2) at Joey DeSa Field at 11 o'clock Saturday morning, while Roosevelt will take on Castle (0-6) at 4 p.m. at Hans L'Orange Park in Waipahu.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].