The JV team had an even more frustrating performance, wrestling below their abilities on too many occasions.  They finished in 2nd, behind a very tough and loaded Kamehameha JV team.  We have a good  group of wrestlers who are willing to do the work, so we’re gonna have to continue pushing forward and hopefully get many of them to attend the off season training and continue to improve on their abilities.  We know we can be better in the future.

The boys and girls varsity continued to strive for their ultimate goals, and put themselves in position to finish strong.  Both qualified all possible weight classes (14 for the boys, and 10 for girls (we don’t have a 220 girl wrestler)) for the states this weekend.  Both teams were able to pull away from the rest of the teams over the course of the tournament and win the ILH Team Championships.  Though we know we still didn’t wrestle our best, which frankly excites us as we don’t need to truly peak until this weekend at states, we did have several key wrestlers work through their injuries and survive the weekend qualifying for states and with the potential to improve their health even slightly more through the week.  We expect to continue working hard this week and polishing up and improving our technique in certain positions, and know that there will be several teams pushing hard to finish on top this weekend, including us.

If at all possible, we’d love to see you either Friday and/or Saturday at the Blaisdell for the excitement of this tournament.
Thank you for all the continued support.

Saturday once again found us hosting the Intermediate and JV round robin tournament, the last of the season.  Our boys and girls varsity teams did an excellent job of setting up the brackets and running the tables, and our younger wrestlers continued to show their development.  We can definitely see the progress of the 7th and 8th graders, and also of several of the JV’s as well.

This week Friday and Saturday the JV, Vars, and Girls will be competing in the ILH Dual Meet Tournament at Maryknoll.  Next weekend, yes Distraction Weekend, will be the ILH Championships (for all levels) at Kamehameha.  As always, we’d love to see you at any/all of these if you can make it.

Friday night the boys team started slowly against Kamehameha, the weight class draw took us right to the heart of their lineup, but we were able to rebound well and string together 5 consecutive pins, from 152-215, which swung the momentum right back in our favor. We finsihed the meet pretty strong, and won decisively against them, knowing they are still missing a few key weight classes due to injury. We expect to see their lineup complete by the end of the season, so we know it’s gonna be a dogfight til the end. Kamehameha is a very tough team again this year.

On Saturday the varsity boys battled St. Louis, and were able to handle them as well, getting a few of our non-starting seniors some very well deserved matches. It was fun to see them battle at that level. On Saturday we also had the inter/jv round robin tournament at St. Louis, and our younger wrestlers showed improvements of their own, and are seemingly getting more comfortable with the battle.

With only a few weeks left of the season, it is definitely time for everyone to step up and prepare their best to finish the season strong. This weekend we’ll have boys and girls varsity dual meets at Punahou Friday night, and Saturday we’ll be hosting another inter/jv round robin tournament. We’d love to see anyone on the island there to cheer us on.

2009 NWCA National Scholastic Award Recipients

Placewinners were, for the Girls:
Erin Uehara, 2nd; Nicole Taniguchi, 4th; Chrissy Chow, 1st; Mindy Chow, 1st; Tiara Kaye, 2nd; Kaimana Lundquist, 1st; and Kanoe Kageyama, 3rd.

For the Boys:
Evan Yamamoto, 2nd; Jordan Ng, 1st; Bryant Fukushima, 2nd (they met in the finals at 120lbs); Todd Murakawa, 1st; Happy Dang, 5th; Bryan Peralta, 1st; Galen McCleary, 1st; LJ Remillard, 3rd; Marlon Booker, 6th; Zach Hernandez, 3rd; Patrick Sheehan, 1st; Evan Johnson, 2nd; and Kolu Buck, 2nd.

Our next competition will be after Christmas, on Dec 29 and 30, at the Iolani Dual Meet Tournament.  This is always an exciting team competition, and we are very pleased that we will be entering 2 Boys teams and 1 Girls team in this years’ tournament, in hopes that we’ll be able to get several of our wrestlers some very good matches and high level competition.  As always, if you’re on island, please stop in if you have the time and support the team.  We’d love to see you!

Here’s a tournament highlight video created by Joshua Kaye (Avi & Tiara’s dad):

This past weekend we took 9 of our best wrestlers to the Brute/Adidas Nationals in Kansas City, MO.? This tournament has wrestlers from across the country, but mostly the Midwest (for obvious reasons), compete against each other within the same grade level. Weight classes all had a 3 lbs allowance from the NFHS weight classes.? Here’s a recap of how they did:

We brought one intermediate wrestler, 8th grader LJ Remilard.? He wrestled very well, earning All-American honors by placing 3rd in the 158 lbs weight class, and learned some valuable lessons about chain-wrestling and wrestling with urgency.

Freshmen Bryant Fukushima (106) and Todd Murakawa (128) also earned All-American, placing 6th and 2nd respectively.? Bryant lost 2 matches to the same very tough wrestler from Team Monday (Kenny Monday-Olympic Gold Medalist 1992) in Texas, and then in his medal match, learned to “let go of the head” a little earlier, ending up stuck on his back while winning the match against a state placewinner from Missouri.? Toddie dominated every opponent on his way to the finals.? There he met an extremely tough, talented, explosive wrestler from Iowa, and when he was unable to finish a single-leg-up position with 15 second left in the 3rd period to tie, he lost a 2 point match to place 2nd.? After the match we found out that this was the Iowa boys’ 3rd National Championship in a row, and that he had recently won the Iowa state championship at 119.? Todd was right in the match with a frosh state champ from Iowa, not too shabby.

Sophomores Evan Yamamoto (106) and Evan Johnson (155) also competed.? Evan Johnson wrestled well, winning one match and losing 2, one in OT and one by 1 point.? Overall he wrestled well, and we are pleased that he has proven to himself that he is capable of competing at this next level.? Evan Yamamoto also wrestled very well, and earned All-American by placing 7th.? This is a testimony to the strength of our program and our JV team, as long as we all continue to wrestle hard in practice every day.

Junior Jordan Ng (115) also earned All-American placing 3rd.? He lost a heartbreaking match on the front-side when, while winning the match, he ended up getting stuck on his back rather than bailing out and cutting his opponent loose for one or at worst giving the reversal and fighting off his belly.? He proved that he learned some important lessons about himself and his inner preparation from that disappointment, as he went on to dominate every subsequent opponent, including an extremely tough North Dakota (I think) state place winner in the 3rd place match.? Jordan has never looked better.

Our seniors shown very brightly, and were not only the “talk of the town” by the tournament coordinators, but were also catching the eye of several college recruiters in attendance.? Reid Oshiro (122) totally dominated his weight class, finishing the finals match with a 3-point tilt off a sweet takedown against a Michigan state place winner who had been named MOW of the toughest pre-season tournament in MI (as told to us by a college recruiter who was there to watch the MI kid). Pretty cool!?

Maika Nagata (128) also won his National Championship in dominant fashion beating an undefeated Colorado wrestler who had become ill (bedridden) just prior to their Regionals (state championship qualifying tournament) and was therefore unable to compete in the state championships.? This was communicated by a very proud father who was very impressed by the way Maika wrestled his son.

The highlight of the tournament was indeed Arnold Toriumi’s (133) performances.? His first match was relatively uneventful, though it was evident that he hadn’t wrestled a competitive match in 2 years.? The rust was incredible.? His quarterfinals match was against an extremely talented, technical wrestler from North Dakota (?-my memory fades).? They banged heads the entire match, and though Arnold had hit 2 solid takedowns out of bounds, that match was knotted at 1 with 10 seconds left in the 3rd.? Arnold hit another solid single-to-Barzegaard finish, and the kid’s butt landed on the out-of bounds line, Arnold climbed up the body immediately, securing the takedown inbounds with less than 2 seconds on the clock.? His semis match was just as tight, though his takedown occurred in the first period, and the rest of the match both wrestlers attacked and countered each other extremely well.? His finals match was, believe it or not, not quite as tight, though the wrestler was a state finalist from Colorado (? again not positive I have the state correct).? He hit 3 takedowns out of bounds in the frst period, and had the kid backing up the entire rest of the match.? He eventually secured several takedowns inbounds through the rest of the match, and also got a few stalling calls against the kid, as Arnold remained relentless, as is his nature.

We brought 9 wrestlers, had 8 All-Americans, including 3 National Champs.? These seniors have now affectionately been dubbed “Murderers Row” by some of the parents in attendance.? It was a great trip, the wrestlers handled themselves respectively on and off the mat, the level of competition was excellent, and we look forward to taking this trip again next Spring.

Hope you all are well-
Coach Oney

We started the pre-season at the Official’s tournament, and both our boys and girls won, which was a very pleasant experience for the girls team especially, as we have a great mix of senior leadership and talented youth learning how to gel together as a team and perform well. The dominant scores of this first tournment are somewhat misleading, as in severalk weightclasses we had 2 place winners, and even finaliusts, which of course at the state toiurnament won’t happen. ?These 2nd high placewinners for us take points away from our competition, which as I said, skews the final results.

We followed that up with the Iolani Dual meet tournament, where we entered 2 boys teams since we do have a good deal of depth at several weight classes and want to get our wrestlers as many matches as we can. ?Both boys teams and the girls team advanced into the Championship pools for day 2. ?The 2nd team “upset” defending OIA Champions Kaiser, though they were without their 108 lbser Jason Spiker, who is currently undefeated and should be seded first at the state tournament, to take 2nd in their pool. ?Day 2 had some exciting matches, and we had the chance to wrestle a very tough Del Oro team from CA in the finals. ?We starrted very strong, 4 straight pins, then falterd a bit in the middle weights, but finished strong and won the dual 36-34 to win the championship. The girls team also went undefeated and won the championship, beating a tough Pearl City team in the finals. ?The 2nd boys team won one match on the 2nd day, but didn’t place.

In the ILH season, both JV and Vars have defeated Damien and St. Louis, while the girls have beaten Iolani, Pac-5 and Kamehameha thus far. ?The girls team is still looking to solidify their line-up, but most of the girls have gotten down to their final weights, so the next couple of weeks will be very important to see that they can compete at those weights and feel strong.

This coming weekend is the first ILH Dual meet rournament, where we’ll wrestle everyone in the ILH over Friday and Saturday. ?The event is at Iolani, if you are in town and can make it, we’d love to see you.

A big mahalo and aloha to the alums who made it in to practice and/or to watch us compete while they were in town. ?It is always awesome to see you all, mostly fat and happy, while you’re home for vacation.

Hope the New Year is treating you all well!

Many thanks, and we look forward to seeing you again soon at our upcoming competitions, and maybe even at this Saturday’s Fundraising Dinner.  FYI, if you are interested in attending, and have not yet secured tickets, please contact Coach Jimmy at takatsuka@punahouwrestling.org and he’ll be happy to make the necessary arrangements.

With appreciation,
Coach Oney for all the Punahou Wrestling Coaches