Moanalua players celebrate after a goal scored against Campbell. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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PEARL CITY — In almost a microcosm of its season to date, the Moanalua boys' soccer team started out hot in its playoff opener Monday, cooled off considerably midway through the game, before ultimately pulling out the win.

Dylan Cabalang scored the game-winning goal in the 53rd minute to lift Moanalua to a 3-2 win over Campbell in a first-round game of the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division I Boys Soccer Tournament at Pearl City's Bino Nieves Stadium.

Na Menehune (8-3) kept its season alive with the win, which earned them a quarterfinal date at West champion Mililani Tuesday and puts them one win away from securing a spot in the state tournament later this month.

The Sabers (4-3-4) saw their season come to an end with the loss.

Moanalua, the fourth seed out of the Eastern Division got first-half goals by Tyler Morton and Blake Tom to take a two-goal lead into halftime. However, Campbell, the West fifth seed, equalized with early second-half goals by Boogie Mattos and Keenan Soares.

About six minutes after Campbell knotted the score at 2-apiece, Cabalang notched just his second goal of the season off a set piece.

The play, which started on a corner kick by Moanalua's Nicholas Ishikawa, was deflected in the box off his teammate, Zechariah Kaneshiro, and Sabers' goalkeeper Kohl Gonzales, before Cabalang put away the rebound from just in front of the net.

"They crossed it in and then Zech headed it back in and it was just right in front of me, so I just took it," said Cabalang, a junior striker. "I knew that they had the momentum, so I knew that we had to stop the momentum, so I just saw my chance and I took it."

Machado said Cabalang's goal came at a most opportune time.

"That was beautiful," Machado said. "The pressure was on already in the second half, because they put two fast ones inside in less than three, four minutes, so it was like we were chasing now."

Morton opened the scoring with his team-leading 16th goal in the 20th minute. He received a long pass through the middle of the field from Tyler Yada, split a pair of defenders and fired a right-footed shot to the top right corner.

"He's the main man," Machado said of Morton, a senior midfielder. "He gets everything going and once he gets going everything is smooth after that. In the first, early second half he was kind of stalled, didn't get much balls to him."

About 11 minutes later, Tom scored from about 35 yards out on a low, lining shot off his right foot.

Two minutes into the second half, Mattos got the Sabers on the board with a free kick from 25 yards out that found the lower left corner of the goal. It was his fourth goal of the year.

Soares, a junior midfielder, headed in the equalizer just four minutes later off a cross. However, campbell coach Randy White said spotting Moanalua two first-half goals ended up being too much to overcome for his squad.

"We started off slow and had a bad first half and that pretty much made us have to chase," said White, whose team allowed three goals in a game for just the second time this season. "We didn't start out to play our game. We played too direct and we don't have the bodies to play a direct game. We have to possess, use combination plays and work the ball around in order to get our opportunities and when we do that, that's how we get it."

Moanalua has gone through its own tribulations this season. It opened the year by winning its first six matches before dropping three straight, but is now on a modest two-game winning streak.

Goalkeeper Hunter Mullican made seven saves for Na Menehune, while Kohl Gonzales had three saves for the Sabers.