Mililani denies Moanalua, 9-3, for state title 'three-peat'
By Wes Nakama
Capping off an impressive week and season of pitching and hitting, Mililani sophomore Hinano Bautista allowed just one earned run in five innings and went 3-for-3 with a double, home run and three RBI's Friday night to lead the Trojans to a 9-3 victory over Moanalua for their third straight DataHouse/HHSAA state championship.
The win before a supportive crowd of 820 gave Mililani a final record of 16-1 and completed the first three-peat since Campbell achieved the feat from 2015 through 2017. Na Menehune, making the program's first state title game appearance, finished at 16-4.
Moanalua finished fourth in the OIA but then stunned league champion Campbell, 13-7, in a three-hour, 13-minute state semifinal game Thursday night. Na Menehune then took a 1-0 lead Friday night after Jolie Mochizuki drew a leadoff walk to start the game, advanced to second on Karah Pasion's single to right field, to third on a fielder's choice groundout and scored on Alia Anzai's single to right.
But that lead did not last very long.
In the bottom of the first, Kamryn Aoki reached on a one-out walk and then Bautista blasted a towering opposite field home run over the fence in left-center, giving the Trojans the lead for good at 2-1.
"It's big, we had the bottom of the inning, and we want to win the inning," Mililani coach Rose Antonio said. "We just had to again, be disciplined at the plate. And don't panic -- we don't panic. We adjust."
The Trojans made it 5-1 in the third after Aubri Nakashima's two-run double down the right field line and Kaylie Kihara's RBI single to right, then extended the lead to 8-1 in the fourth after Bautista's sky-high pop-up to right field landed for a run-scoring campfire single between three fielders, followed by Nakashima's sacrifice fly to center and an RBI single by Lana Nakayama.
"They're a great hitting team, it's hard to pitch to them," Moanalua coach Kylee Oshiro said. "You know they're going to hit bombs left and right, and as long as you can control that, I think we did a pretty good job of keeping them to one (home run) today."
Na Menehune got two runs back following an 11-minute rain delay in the top of the fifth inning, after Ava Atagi's two-out single to center scored Mochizuki from third base and Anzai from second to close the score to 8-3. Both runs were unearned due to an earlier error, and Bautista got a strikeout to kill the rally.
That ended her night in the pitcher's circle, but Bautista said she was confident reliever Taylor Adriano and the Mililani defense would hold firm, which they did.
"Just knowing that my team got me, knowing that they got my back through everything," said Bautista, a sophomore left-hander. "Just knowing they could pick me up."
Despite the loss, Oshiro said Moanalua can take pride in the fact this was the first Na Menehune team to advance to a state tournament final.
"Nobody can take this away from them, they're the first team in school history to get this far," Oshiro said. "No matter what, the record books will already have that for now, until somebody comes along and hopefully wins the title. That would be great, as the goal. And this group of girls, they're young, but they're fighters. So last year, the biggest accomplishment was the first time in school history we got to the OIA (championship) game, against Mililani. So now, one-up that, first time in school history we got to the state title game ... against Mililani."
Photos: Gavin Yasunari
