KAHUKU — It was a dream scenario: an opportunity to knock off a national-caliber program in the familiarity of one’s own backyard.
It very nearly became reality for Kahuku on Friday night against St. Frances Academy of Baltimore, Md., a traveling powerhouse with aspirations on a national title.
A stalwart defensive effort gave the Red Raiders a chance to shock the Panthers, ranked third in the most recent MaxPreps poll. One final stop was all it would take in a contest of scarce offense.
St. Frances – larger, athletic and rife with Division I football prospects – was denied on its first 11 drives of the game. But in a stunning sequence of completed passes, its 12th was another story in a 22-15 comeback victory at Carleton Weimer Field.
With the Panthers trailing by a point and needing to cover 80 yards with no timeouts and 1:45 on the clock, quarterback Michael Van Buren found receiver Ryan Manning four straight times, covering nearly all the distance in a flash of heady playmaking. Kyree Benton took a 10-yard swing pass and beat Kahuku to the right pylon for the go-ahead score.
“It means everything, because a lot of us, we haven’t been to Hawaii before,” said Manning, a senior who is committed to Maryland. “For us to be out here is a great experience, and Kahuku, they’re a great team. They competed to the end, just like we did.”
Kahuku (6-2), led by quarterback Waika Crawford, could not muster a response to St. Frances (5-0) in the remaining 39 seconds, and suddenly, painfully, it was over.
For senior linebacker Liona Lefau and his defending state champion teammates, being merely good against a great team is no longer satisfactory.
“We didn’t do enough,” Lefau said, emotion evident in his eyes. “We didn’t do enough.”
With one of its most talented teams ever, Kahuku set out to test itself this season with two matchups with national powerhouses in the midst of OIA Open Division play. It lost 34-7 at No. 1 St. John Bosco two weeks ago, but this was a rare chance to get a team of that caliber to come all the way from the East Coast and have to prove itself in very foreign territory.
SFA’s fans appeared taken aback at their unbeaten traveling team’s inability to break the Kahuku defense; they’d seen their team prevail in places like Illinois, Texas and Florida. But four times, the Red Raiders held firm in the red zone, including twice from the 1 on fourth down.
“It’s cool to play them, but that was our game. We should’ve won,” the Texas-committed Lefau said. “We deserve to play with these guys. We can play with anybody.”
Kahuku’s offense has had some of its big-play ability stripped since Week 1 with the ankle injury of receiver Kainoa Carvalho. The offense was further hamstrung with a recent leg injury to top running back Clyde Taulapapa.
The workload shifted to junior Va’aimalae Fonoti, who scored on a pair of 1-yard runs. Against the large, athletic Panthers, he had to work for each of his 61 yards on 32 carries.
“We wanted to control the clock, control the ball,” coach Sterling Carvalho said. “We did that in the beginning of the game. Our defense was always fresh coming in and made plays, made stops.
“We had a game plan in that we couldn’t get in a track meet like we did against St. John Bosco, go score for score. So, we had to shorten the game, tighten the game and, for the most part, our defense did their job.”
St. Frances was penalized 17 times for 141 yards. As frustrating as those mistakes were for the Panthers, Carvalho lamented that Kahuku’s were costlier; SFA’s first two scores came on an interception return and a fumble return.
Kahuku had golden opportunities to put the game away. After Red Raiders freshman Madden Soliai blocked a Panthers punt and Brock Fonoimoana recovered it at the SFA 1, Fonoti punched in his second touchdown one play later for a 15-8 lead.
Zayden Mariteragi’s ensuing kickoff was a chip shot that caught SFA off guard when the ball died on the turf at the Panthers’ 24. Tyson Rodrigues recovered it to give Kahuku a chance to go up two scores.
Instead, Kahuku was stuffed and, after a timeout, Carvalho elected to go for it on fourth and 8 from the 22 instead of summoning Kaimana Carvalho for a 39-yard field-goal attempt.
Carvalho said he made the change because the defense spoke up that it could get a stop if necessary.
“They believe in themselves and that’s what we want,” he said.
Unfortunately for Kahuku, Crawford couldn’t handle the snap and SFA defensive lineman Da’Shawn Womack, a four-star recruit committed to LSU, scooped it at the 40 for the 60-yard return TD.
Two unsportsmanlike penalties on the return forced the Panthers to go for the 2-point conversion from their 33. Van Buren’s pass was no good and Kahuku still led 15-14.
Kahuku had to punt it away, but it seemed that, just maybe, linebacker Fale Atuaia won the game with an impressive leaping interception of a Van Buren pass over the middle with 3:08 left.
Kahuku got a first down with a 10-yard Fonoti rush. With one more reset of the chains, it was over. But three straight unsuccessful attempts on the ground, separated by SFA timeouts, meant that the Panthers would get one more shot from their 20 with 1:45 remaining.
All game, the Red Raiders never got to Van Buren, which proved crucial on the final drive.
Van Buren went 5-for-5 on the drive, covering 100 yards to overcome 20 lost to penalties. Manning caught eight passes for 176 yards. Ninety of those yards came on the last drive as his four straight catches, of 23, 15, 32 and 20 yards came with a very high degree of difficulty.
“Moral of the story is, 1 has super powers,” Panthers defensive lineman Isaiah Neal said of Manning. “That’s it.”
St. Frances coach Messay Hailemariam said his team works regularly on 4-minute and 2-minute drills with no timeouts.
He credited the Kahuku defense for holding out as long as it did; the Raiders succeeded in bottling up the power running game. The Panthers were held to one of 11 conversions on third down, and one of five on fourth.
“The best thing that they did, they really prepared well for us. They took away exactly what we did really well, and they game-planned to a T, and they frustrated us a little bit,” Hailemariam said. “We didn’t necessarily have the answer we would’ve liked, but we had an answer. We got the W and that’s what it’s about.”
Manning, for his part, said Kahuku was as physical a team as he's faced in his high school career, both up front and in the secondary.
Linebacker Leonard Ah You had two tackles for loss, an interception, another pass breakup, and a quarterback hurry for Kahuku.
Carvalho expressed pride in the team heading back into Oahu Interscholastic Association Open Division play next week against Moanalua.
“It just showed that we can hang with these guys,” he said.
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.