Saturday - September 2, 2006

Today was the first day of Iolani athletics after the school year started. The Ann Kang Volleyball Tournament got me back in the swing of doing Iolani athletics. Today it really hit home that the school year has begun!

First off was the first ILH cross-country meet of the season. It was held at the Waipio Soccer Complex. There are usually 6 races in a XC meet, intermediates, junior varsity and varsity, one each for boys and girls. Since it was the first meet, it was run pretty casually, not scored and they combined the junior varsity and the varsity.

The best finish of the day was in the Varsity boys race where MPI (Scott Motobu) and Iolani (Kon Weber) battled right up to the finish. After leading for the whole race, Kon was caught by Scott with about 150 meters to go. Scott surged ahead as they passed me but it looked like Kon came back and regained the lead at the finish. A great race and a sign of more great things to come from these fine runners.




In the girls Varsity, Julie Besenbruch and Halie Abing of Maryknoll continued their dominance of the ILH but will they be able to find enough good runners to have a scoring team? Newcomers Amanda Tamanaha (St. Andrew's Priory) and 9th graders, Katie Pellitteri and Jenna Wong (from Iolani), will challenge them all season.

Teamwise, for the girls, Punahou has to be the favorite. If the meet were scored they would have won 45-50 over Iolani. Punahou ran in a tight pack taking the 7th through the 11th place. Iolani, though, had 9 girls in the top 20. It's a long season and it will be interesting to see who's standing at the end.


The smaller amount of races was a big break for me as the meet was over earlier than usual. This allowed me to do the Iolani-Moanalua varsity football game. So it was back to school, just made it by 2pm, starting time. The weather was hot and sunny for a while, then it cooled off a bit with some showers. There was enough light, though, for me to use my "big gun" lenses (100-300mm F4.0 with a 1.4 extender) that I started using for water polo in the summer. As I expected, this combo works well for football. I will also use it for soccer when the light is good.

The first half was a defensive struggle with the score 3-0 in Iolani's favor.

In the second half, Iolani's superior manpower took charge over a tiring Moanalua team. It seemed that every time I looked I saw Justin Yamamoto running with the ball for good yardage. Ryan Dung also started hitting on his passes. Three touchdowns and a safety later allowed the Raiders to put this one safely in the win column. Final score was 26-7.

For more photos of the cross country meet and the football game, please visit my Smugmug galleries.

ILH Cross Country
Iolani Events