Baseball falls to Nā Aliʻi in last season game
Photo by Faith Owan
Kulana-Alika Wilhelm raises dust as he makes it home and scores a point for the Warriors at the last game of the season on April 10, 2015 at Maehara Stadium. The game was against King Kekaulike High School and ended with a 13-10 win for Nā Aliʻi.
The Warriors played their last game of the season at Maehara Stadium last night with Nā Aliʻi taking the win, 13-10.
“It feels pretty good,” King Kekaulike Head Coach Mark Makimoto said. “Kamehameha’s a very good, young team, and they battle really hard.”
The game started off with Kamehameha in the lead, with the Warriors scoring one point at the bottom of each of the first three innings. In the next two innings, neither team scored, but it was in the sixth inning that the game saw a turnaround.
King Kekaulike scored seven points at the top of the sixth inning partly on three Warrior errors, putting them ahead of the Kamehameha by four points. At the bottom of the sixth, after two quick outs, junior Kulana-Alika Wilhelm hit a double. Then junior Kekoa Ostermiller hit a single that took Wilhelm home, bringing the game to 7-4.
At the top of the seventh inning, Nā Aliʻi scored three points and remained in the lead; however at the bottom of the inning the Warriors came back with six points and tied up the game.
“When we were losing in the seventh inning, we came back and scored six…everybody felt the momentum and everyone came out swinging,” junior Rylie Velez said.
The game continued into an eighth inning, and Nā Aliʻi scored three more points, putting them back into the lead. At the bottom of the inning, Kamehameha wasn’t able to score and lost by three points to King Kekaulike.
“We didn’t play fundamental baseball; we didn’t take care of the ball. We just gave the other team too many chances,” Head Coach Kaʻeo Lau Hee said.
Despite the loss, players still felt good about the team’s overall performance and effort.
“I like the intensity that we had in the seventh inning, game was ten runs; it felt really good,” senior Kristian “Kaʻimi” Gilliland said.
As far as what went wrong in the game, Velez said that it had a mental aspect to it.
“As soon as you make one error, you get down on yourself and start throwing the ball all around, and that will lead to more errors,” he said.
The mistakes made might have cost the Warriors the win, but Gilliland doesn’t think that it was something to dwell on.
“I think we could have cut down the errors — with eleven errors — but what are you going to do? It’s baseball; it’s going to happen,” he said.
The regular season ended last night, April 10, for Kamehameha, and Velez said that the team should be very strong when the baseball season starts up again next year.
“[The team] played with a lot of heart, played a full game, didn’t give up when they were down, and they stayed together as a team,” Coach Lau Hee said. “[They] played the game the right way in the end.”
