Mid-Pacific's Alexander Oley touches home plate after hitting a home run in a 3-2 win over Punahou. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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MANOA — In its first game of the regular season, Mid-Pacific was gifted with a second chance.

The Owls benefited from a costly baserunning error by visiting Punahou and posted a late-game rally to beat the Buffanblu, 3-2, in extra innings at Kitamura Diamond/Damon Field Wednesday afternoon.

It was the opening game of the Interscholastic League of Honolulu Division I season for both the Owls (1-0) and Buffanblu (0-1).

Wyatt Young drew a bases-loaded walk with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning to bring Chase Wago in to score the winning run in walk off fashion.

"It felt like a championship," said a relieved Wago.

Wago led off the inning by working the count full before taking ball four. He moved over to second on Trevin Tengan's chopper over first base and advanced to third on Ryne Aniya's sac bunt.

Jared Fujiwara was intentionally walked to load the bases for Young, who was 0 for his first three at bats. He was hit by the first pitch from Buffanblu reliever Kahi Bisho, but the home plate umpire ruled that he leaned into the pitch. Fujiwara eventually took a 3-2 pitch off the plate for the walk off RBI.

"I told myself before I went up to bat that if I get on, we're scoring and we're going to win this game so all I just tried to do was on for the team," said Wago, a Second Team All-Hawaii pitcher last year.

The Owls erased a two-run deficit in the bottom half of the ninth inning. Alex Oley led off with a first-pitch home run to left field and pinch hitter Bronson Hakkeu plated Wago with a one-out single back up the middle.

"That helped," MPI coach Dunn Muramaru said of Oley's solo blast. "I'm just glad we got this one. Especially when they outplayed us the whole game."

Wago, the cleanup hitter, reached base three times and scored twice for the Owls. He allowed one run on six hits in five innings pitched before giving way to a trio of arms out of the bullpen. Ethan Fujikami worked the final 1 1/3 innings and got the win.

Trevin Tengan batted 2 for 3 with a double for MPI, which committed four fielding errors.

Easton Takamoto batted 2 for 4 with an RBI to pace the bats of the Buffanblu (0-1).

In the top of the third inning, Takamoto hit a 2-1 pitch over the fence in left center with two runners on base. However, the home plate umpire ruled that the second baserunner did not touch home plate and was consequently out after Takamoto crossed the plate.

"I threw a horrible pitch and I just got lucky and got that second chance," Wago said.

Instead of a three-run home run, the inning-ending play officially went down as a single and an unassisted out at home.

"I've never seen that in three decades of baseball — never, ever," Punahou coach Keenan Sue said.

Muramaru couldn't help but chuckle about the "lucky break."

"That was big because 3-0 is hard to come back from," Muramaru said. "Punahou did a good job of hitting and we kind of stole the game today."

Cole Cabrera singled and came around to score on a wild pitch to give Punahou a 2-0 lead in the top of the seventh inning.

Kahi Bisho was charged with the loss for the Buffanblu. Starter Noah Goss went 6 1/3 innings and retired 15 straight MPI hitters before surrendering two runs in the seventh.

"Noah definitely pitched well enough to win, but the great thing about this game for us is that the team that was out there today, they battled, they made a few mistakes but we're light years ahead of where we were last year and we're continuing to make improvement and I thought this was a great showing for our guys for the most part," Sue said. "We do need to tighten things up a little bit. We made some big plays, but we didn't make some other big plays."

MPI played without three starters who were out with the flu, including First Team All-Hawaii second baseman Jacob Maekawa.