Running back Alvin "Kolu" Quisquirin-Sabagala leads No. 9 Waianae into Friday night's OIA Open Division football game against No. 10 Kapolei at the Alvin Nagasako Athletic Complex. Brian Bautista | Special to SL

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The stakes for the Waianae football team this weekend are clear-cut: Win and you're in. 

The Seariders (2-3) can clinch a spot in the four-team Oahu Interscholastic Association Open Division tournament should they come out of Friday night's road game at Kapolei with a victory. 

"I think the magnitude of the game everyone understands: you win and you continue your season, or this is the end," Waianae interim coach Matt Murakawa said.

Whereas the Seariders will be playing their sixth game in as many weeks, the Hurricanes (1-3) are coming off of a bye week and last played on Nov. 6. As it works out for Murakawa's squad, its bye is next week — the final week of the seven-week regular season. 

"I think it hurts us that we have the bye at the end," Murakawa said. "If we had the bye earlier it would have helped us get more guys off the COVID (protocols)."

Murakawa, a math teacher at the school and the former JV head coach, said that as the season has gone on, the numbers of players he has available has continued to grow. 

"We started slow. Our numbers were really small that first game — I wanna say it was very close to 40 (players) because of all the mandates and stuff like that and we either (were granted) exemptions, or guys got full vaccinated and we got a lot more guys now, but you get some injuries, too, so you lose some guys, but this is as big as we've been after a slower start than normal," Murakawa said. 

Waianae opened the season with a 49-6 loss at Mililani back on Oct. 15. It evened its record with a 47-6 win over Leilehua a week later, but dropped back-to-back games against Campbell (39-0) and Kahuku (50-7). 

Murakawa pointed to the Kahuku game as being the most beneficial for his team, regardless of result. The game was tied at 7 in the first quarter before the Red Raiders pulled away with a string of 43 consecutive points to close out the game. 

"They're a great opponent and I actually thought we kind of stood up to them in the beginning. We talked about it all week long that we have to execute on offense because if you get a lead on any team, then the other team kind of cramps up a little bit, but the kids kept fighting," Murakawa said. 

The Red Raiders passed for 228 of their 336 yards of total offense and held the Seariders to just 96 passing yards and 67 net yards. 

"Once Kahuku gets a lead, they're really, really, really hard to beat, but we gotta be consistent and that game taught us what standard that we need to play at; They're the gold standard as far as I'm concerned, so it kind of gives us a good idea of what we gotta do," Murakawa said. 

Kahuku tallied eight sacks and had one interception. It averaged six yards per rush and got a four-touchdown passing performance from quarterback Jason Mariteragi. 

He continued, "Against the best teams, mistakes become significantly more important. You can have ten guys doing one thing and one guy doing the wrong thing and they'll always find the one guy doing the wrong thing, so I think it opened our eyes that we can be competitive, but it opened our eyes that we have so much more to go."

The aftermath of the 43-point loss to the Red Raiders was all positive, however. 

"I thought that after the Kahuku game, we had great practices," said Murakawa, who noted the difficulties his team faced following the seven-week pause on all extracurricular activities , including athletics, from early August to late September. 

"The restart didn't give us that running start to the season, so I feel like now we're kind of hitting our strides. When you think about the regular offseason, this would be when we're about scrimmaging guys, so we're kind of where we would be normally, just that we're at the end of the season," he added. 

Murakawa said that it has taken time for the team to gel, but things have certainly come along. 

"Early on we didn't have all our guys and some of them were kind of key linemen and as we got them, things have been falling in places. We've been playing better, but we just haven't had that continuity. The restart was really hard for us, it kind of put us in a bind, and was kind of a weird start to the season, but it is what it is — at least you get to play, that's what we tell the kids," Murakawa said. "The alternative is we don't have a season, so it's been really different than anything else I've ever done in all my years of coaching, but I'm sure all the other coaches would say the same."

The Seariders bounced back from their lopsided losses at the hands of the Sabers and Red Raiders with a 49-20 win over Farrington last Friday. They posted 444 yards of total offense with a relatively-balanced effort of 263 yards through the air and 181 rushing. 

"I felt like that was a good week of practice for us and it kind of showed in the game," Murakawa said. "Even though we got kind of sloppy in the end, but the way we kind of controlled the tempo of the football and was good to see — and football is not rocket science, right? If you run twice many plays as the opponent, you have a really good chance of winning the game, which is what we did."

Alvin "Kolu" Quisquirin-Sabagala, a 5-foot-10, 230-pound senior running back, ran for 126 yards on 16 carries (7.9 yards per attempt). His touchdown runs of 15 and 4 yards served as bookends to the high-scoring contest. 

"We controlled the ball on offense and minimized the defense and we were able to take chances on defense. We were kind of aggressive because we got a lead and when you have a lead in this sport that's always the easier way to play," Murakawa said. 

It didn't take Murakawa very long after Friday's win over the Governors to turn his attention to Kapolei, whose only win came against Farrington, 27-14, two days before Halloween. 

"They're tough," Murakawa said of the ‘Canes. "They're big and physical, so we really gotta hunker down and it comes down to execution on offense and defense and basically just getting a lead, so we force them to play from behind — I think that will be key."

The Waianae coach would like nothing more than to see his team get out ahead early Friday night. 

"We gotta control the ball — just like we did against Farrington — if we control the ball on offense, then we'll be alright, we'll be able to compete with them, but again, it just comes down to which teams executes well on offense and defense," Murakawa reiterated. "I don't think it'll be a bunch of tricky schemes — just they do what they do and we do what we do — that's what we've been focusing on this week."

With all that is on the line, Murakawa has not had to do much motivating of his student-athletes this week. 

"We've told the kids that this is our season," he said. "As far as we're concerned, it's a playoff game and we gotta win to continue playing, so that's kind of how we threw it to them and we're either gonna live up to the moment, or we're not, so we'll find out on Friday."

Kickoff between the ninth-ranked Seairders and 10th-ranked Hurricanes is scheduled for approximately 7:30 p.m. at the Alvin Nagasako Athletic Complex.