“Finish”. It’s the motto the team adopted last year, as we rallied to our first State Championship in 39 years. But it also describes well, the effort the Varsity Boys put in as the season came to a close. 11 semi-finalists, 12 medalists and 225.5 total points are all the highest totals ever in the state tournament. The boys did an absolutely phenomenal job closing out their season, repeating as State Wrestling Champions.

Congratulations to individual State Champions Reid Oshiro (125), Rudie Schaefer (152) and Daniel Chow (145), who is also Punahou’s first 3x Boys State Champion.

I can’t say enough about the great effort our Girls put in all year long. Even while forfeiting three (of ten) weight classes, they still contended for both the ILH and State titles. They’ll be the first to tell you that as a team, they didn’t wrestle as well as they could have. But in spite of that, they still managed a third place finish — one better than last year!

Of the seven girls who qualified for the tournament, three made it to the finals with freshman Chrissy Chow (114) winning a state championship.

BOYS – Final Team Standings

GIRLS – Final Team Standings

Kudos to the Honolulu Advertiser. Though their print coverage was pretty standard stuff, they posted a great collection of videos, including every finals match in its entirety. That’s really nice for a sport like ours that doesn’t get much press.

Here are links to our championship matches:

Chrissy Chow (114)     Reid Oshiro (125)     Daniel Chow (145)     Rudie Schaefer (152)

Also wanted to give a shout out to John Akana (’85) and the folks at www.DigitalSports.com. They did a great job covering the entire tournament and have put up a cool site devoted to high school athletics that’s worth checking out.

I like their match coverage. They’ve edited the matches down, but provide some pretty good play-by-play commentary.

Finals Matches:
Reid Oshiro   Daniel Chow   Rudie Schaefer   Chrissy Chow

There are also interviews with a bunch of our guys. Gentlemen, some of you definitely need to work on your public speaking skills!

Wrestler Interviews:
Reid Oshiro   Rudie Schaefer   Rudie & Oney   Matt Sasaki   Daniel Chow

Here’s Oney’s post-tournament interview.

Good to see wrestling getting more coverage!

Congratulations to individual State Champions Reid Oshiro (125), Rudie Schaefer (152) and Daniel Chow (145), who is also Punahou’s first 3x State Champion.

I can’t say enough about the great effort our Girls put in all year long. Even while forfeiting three (of ten) weight classes, they still contended for both the ILH and State titles. They’ll be the first to tell you that as a team, they didn’t wrestle as well as they could have. But in spite of that, they still managed a third place finish — one better than last year!

Of the seven girls who qualified for the tournament, three made it to the finals with freshman Chrissy Chow (114) winning a state championship.

BOYS – Final Team Standings

GIRLS – Final Team Standings

JV put in the standout performance yesterday, with 11 individual champions (out of 14 weight classes) and more than doubling up 2nd place Kamehameha on points. Two weeks ago, JV wrestled about as poorly as they had all season. The coaches were very direct with the team, challenging them to step up their performance if they were serious about repeating as ILH Champions. Well, "step up" they did. Their results of the past two weekends speak for themselves, but just as impressive have been their practices. The intensity went up by what seemed to be an order of magnitude in their drilling and live sessions, and the wrestle-offs were as fierce as any of their outside competition. JV: WELL DONE!

In spite of an uneven performance, the Girls managed to stay in contention until the end. A mediocre finals round landed the Girls in third place; quite respectable considering they forfeit three weight classes, but disappointing considering they still had a chance to do better. The good news is that they have one more shot next week.

Varsity’s tournament was also quite uneven. On the (very) positive side, we had 11 out of 14 wrestlers in the finals. The negatives? Our 103 and 119 pounders should also have been in the finals but wrestled below their abilities in the early rounds. Also, of the 11 finals matches, we only won 6. A winning percentage, but just barely so.

So at the risk of sounding like too much of a perfectionist, we’ve still got a lot of work to do in the coming week. Kaiser looked very strong, beating a tough Pearl City team in the OIA Championships yesterday and both will be strong contenders next week. Lahainaluna put all 14 wrestlers in the finals of the MIL, which means they’ll also be very tough to beat at the state tournament. Some may consider us the front-runner but we’re not deluding ourselves: this is a wide open state tournament.

For now, we celebrate a very successful ILH season. Congratulations to the JV for a strong finish to a great season, to the Girls for stepping up all season despite being short-handed, and to the Varsity on their third consecutive ILH title.

Tomorrow, it’s back to work.

Final Team Scores – JV

Final Team Scores – Girls

Final Team Scores – Varsity

We’re gearing up for a strong finish. Only two weeks left in the season (just one for JV) and thankfully, we’re wrestling well. ILH Championships are next week @ Punahou and the State Tournament starts Feb 29 @ the Blaisdell.

MATCH SCORES – JV
Punahou 63  Damien 18
Punahou 45  Kamehameha 25

GIRLS
Punahou 34  Kamehameha 23
Punahou 27  Iolani 22

VARSITY
Punahou 67  Pac-5 6
Punahou 46  Kamehameha 13

Final ILH Season Record
JV     11 – 1
Girls  6 – 4
Vars  12 – 0 (23 – 4 overall)

Varsity put in a solid performance and managed to finish the dual meet season undefeated.

Next up: the ILH Dual Meet Championship. At all levels, we’ll wrestled the rest of the league in a bracketed team tournament.

MATCH SCORES – JV
Punahou 39  Iolani 19

GIRLS
Punahou 36  Pac-5 18
Punahou 27  Kamehameha 31

VARSITY
Punahou 55  Iolani 15

ILH Season Record
JV     9 – 1
Girls  4 – 4
Vars  10 – 0 (21 – 4 overall)

In spite of the distractions of both carnival and variety show, the Varsity team did keep their focus against Kamehameha and improved to 8 – 0 in ILH with a 43 -21 victory. Kamehameha wrestled much better than the last time we met, but our guys also upped their game to secure the win.

We are on the home stretch of the season, with only three more weeks for JV and four more for the Girls and Varsity. We wrap our dual meet season next week with Iolani for the boys and Kamehameha & Pac-5 for the girls.

MATCH SCORES – JV
Punahou 30  Kamehameha 31

GIRLS
Punahou 22  Iolani 27

VARSITY
Punahou 43  Kamehameha 21

ILH Season Record
JV     8 – 1
Girls  3 – 3
Vars  9 – 0 (20 – 4 overall)

Final Standings

With only five weeks left in the season, we challenged the wrestlers to improve their focus on the (wrestling) tasks at hand and finish the season strong.

Girls improved their season record to 3 – 2 and JV improved to 7 – 0. Varsity is also 7 – 0 in ILH and 18 – 4 overall.

Match Results – GIRLS
Punahou 33  Kamehameha 30

JV BOYS
Punahou 46  St. Louis 18

VARSITY BOYS
Punahou 70  St. Louis 3

But we’re also quite aware that the matches that really count are ahead of us. We’ve still got a lot to work on in the coming weeks to make sure we finish the season strong.Wish us luck.

Match Scores – JV
Punahou 74  St. Louis 6
Punahou 44  Kamehameha 30
Punahou 75  Damien 3
Punahou 75  Iolani 6
Punahou 68  Pac-5 12

Match Scores – Varsity
Punahou 51  Iolani 16
Punahou 73  Pac-5 0
Punahou 60  Damien 15