Kapolei's Shadon Hopeau scored a goal in the ninth minute of play in the Hurricanes' win over Mid-Pacific. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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WAIPAHU — Shandon Hopeau and Sean Yoshida each scored a goal to help Kapolei to a 2-0 win over Mid-Pacific on the opening-day of The Queen's Medical Center/Hawaii High School Athletic Association Division I Boys Soccer State Championships at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Complex Wednesday afternoon.

The Hurricanes, who finished fourth in the Oahu Interscholastic Association tournament two weeks ago, snapped a two-game losing streak to improve to 10-3-1. They will play Big Island Interscholastic Federation winner and No. 4 seed Kealakehe (13-0-2) in a 3 p.m. quarterfinal Thursday in the main stadium.

The championship hopes were dashed for the Interscholastic League of Honolulu runner-up Owls (8-2-3), who had won the previous two D2 state titles.

"When we got the draw we knew it was a tough one, but maybe it was what our team needed," Kapolei co-head coach Ryan Lau said. "We've tended all year to play to the level of our opponent and what we really wanted to focus on after the OIA tournament was that it's about us. We have so much respect for Mid-Pac and the great things they've done, so we're very pleased. I think having them first got us refocused after not attaining what we wanted to in the OIA tournament."

In just the ninth minute of the game, Hopeau got the Hurricanes on the board with a header just over the goalkeeper for his state-leading 29th goal of the season.

""It was a cross from one of our outside backs," said Hopeau, a First Team All-Hawaii midfielder last year. "In practice we've been working on that dangerous ball — that diagonal ball — so my teammate looked at me at the perfect time. It was a perfect run because everyone else was offsides and I called them off."

Kapolei had as many as six players helping in the defensive third to help mitigate the threat of Mid-Pacific's scoring duo of Tyler Allen and Payton Boyd. Allen led the ILH with eight goals while Boyd had seven.

The Hurricanes' back line of Lyric DeLeon, Branden Wong, Noah Barroga and Bradyn Yoshida limited the scoring opportunities that Allen and Boyd saw.

"Our defense held it down," said sophomore midfielder Sean Yoshida, who scored Kapolei's other goal in the closing minutes. "We didn't give their number one player (Allen) many chances to score; He barely touched the ball."

Lau said the defense was to be very cognizant of where Allen, Boyd and midfielder Kohei Tomita were at all times.

"The game plan was to just minimize the options, so if (Allen) gets the ball wide, not allow him to combine inside, or not allow him to beat us inside," Lau said. "We wanted to limit his looks and make sure he always has pressure any time he receives the ball."

Mid-Pacific coach Jayson Abe was frustrated with his team's lack of execution in the first 40 minutes.

"It was ugly; The first half was real ugly," Abe said. "We didn't help Tyler out very much in the first half. I thought we got away from our game plan, got caught playing a lot of balls in the air. We went away from our usual style of play, which is to keep the ball on the ground and knock it around and combine and connect with one another. It just didn't work out to our liking in the first half."

Although Hopeau's goal came while the Hurricanes were working against the wind, it actually worked out to their advantage.

Lau said part of the game plan was to keep the ball away from MPI's midfielders with longer passes.

"Don't get me wrong, we like to possess, we like to switch the field, we like to move it around, but when we looked at the matchup with Mid-Pacific we felt that we were playing into their game a little bit," Lau said. "We feel very confident in our backs and we feel very confident in our front players, so we wanted to high-pressure them, win the ball, see if we can find Shandon on the wing early and often and put the pressure on them and not let them get settled into the game and I thought doing that early we got a couple chances and then we broke through and we kind of got them unsettled in the first half."

In the 79th minute, Yoshida poked a ball into the left corner of the goal from about eight yards. It was his fourth of the year.

Yoshida said Hopeau's early goal set the tone for the ‘Canes.

"It brought a lot of confidence to our team, because coming into the game we were nervous but we were excited and once he scored it brought us all together and we played harder," Yoshida said.

It was the second straight game that the Owls failed to score. They were coming off a scoreless tie against Punahou in the final game of the ILH season on Feb. 12.

Mid-Pacific will play Mililani in a 1 p.m. consolation game Thursday.