Monday Morning MIL: After win streak ends, Lunas bounce back with 24-7 win over Baldwin

When Lahainaluna High School’s record winning streak in Maui Interscholastic League football came to an end last week, Dean Rickard didn’t have to look far to find someone who knew what it felt like.

The Lunas’ 46-game, eight-year win streak vs. MIL foes pales in the league’s lore behind only one in my humble opinion — the 164-game, 13-year streak that Todd Rickard, Dean’s younger brother, coached the Lady Lunas basketball team to from 2007-19.

The fun talks between the two brothers, both former Lunas football standouts, helped Dean Rickard, the Lunas’ head football coach, recover in time to guide his troops to an important 24-7 over Baldwin on Friday at Sue Cooley Stadium. The win moved the Lunas to 1-0 in MIL Division I play in the four-game in-division portion of the season that will determine the MIL’s single state tournament berths for D-I and D-II.

“We joke around with each other, but he realized that anytime there’s that kind of numbers it’s pretty amazing,” Dean Rickard said. “He always told his girls, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ But then when it happened and their streak was broken, he said it just like we said it — it was just a big relief for us as coaches, for the team.”

He added that offensive coordinator Garret Tihada said it best: “We just gotta start another streak.”

“Everything comes to an end, it’s just how you pick up after that,” Dean Rickard said.

The Lunas fell behind the Bears (0-1 MIL D-I), who broke their own 22-game losing streak this season and were 3-1 overall coming into Friday’s game. Max Kushi put Baldwin ahead on a lightning-strike 51-yard run with 1:29 left in the first quarter. The Bears had chances to increase the lead — an interception in the end zone ended one of those and two missed field goals stifled others — but they still led 7-3 until late in the third quarter.

That’s when Kahi Magno stepped to the forefront — the 5-foot-8, 165-pound senior is a big part of the Lunas’ defense as a linebacker, but he also runs the single-wing offense they drop into in the red zone. His 1-yard scoring run with 2:42 left in the third quarter gave Lahainaluna a 10-7 lead and his determined 14-yard run with 2:10 left in the game took away any doubt.

Wide receiver Maui Strong caught a 24-yard scoring pass from Jaeden-Ian Pascua to make it 17-7 with 4:53 to play.

At halftime, the Lunas coaches had a message for their team, which at that point had scored one touchdown in its last 10 quarters. It took hold with Magno, one of the team leaders whose family lost their house in the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfire.

“Our mentality was just to win and to score,” Magno said of what the coaches told them.

He added that his chances at quarterback are “fun because when I get the ball I just get to follow a couple big linemen. I know I can trust them, just follow behind them and they will lead me the way. … This win really meant a lot to us. It made us realize we just have to keep working and gotta keep moving forward. We can’t look back — last week’s loss, we took that hard and personal and we had to come out even stronger.”

In the only other football games this week, Kamehameha Maui rolled to a 50-0 lead at halftime and beat Moloka’i 57-0 in MIL D-II play, while Maui High used its bye week to travel to Hawai’i Island and beat Kealakehe 39-7 on Thursday. This week, Baldwin celebrates homecoming with a game against Maui High on Friday at War Memorial Stadium and King Kekaulike travels to Moloka’i for a Saturday morning D-II matchup.

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VOLLEYBALL: BALDWIN, SEABURY STILL UNBEATEN; MAUI PREP COMPETES IN CANADA

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The Baldwin girls volleyball team, ranked fifth in the state in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser statewide poll, is 8-0 after a 25-12, 25-19, 25-15 sweep of Kamehameha Maui on Thursday. The Bears can clinch the regular-season title and state tournament berth that goes with it on their senior night Oct. 1 at Jon Garcia Gym against Lahainaluna.

The Warriors are second in the Division I standings at 6-2, followed by Maui High (4-4), King Kekaulike (2-6) and Lahainaluna (0-8).

The Maui Prep girls traveled to Vancouver, B.C., and finished with a 3-2 record in the Trinity Western Spartans Volleyball Tournament, good for 11th place in the 24-team event. It was the first trip to the continent for any MPA girls team and the second for the school, following a trip that the boys golf team made two years ago. 

Na Pueo (6-1 MIL D-II) have a big match on Friday against defending MIL D-II champion Seabury Hall (6-0) at the Erdman Athletic Center on campus in Olinda. The rest of MIL D-II standings are as follows: Moloka’i (6-2), Lāna’i (6-2), Hana (6-4), Kūlanihāko’i (3-6), Haleakalā Waldorf (0-9), Kihei Charter (0-9). 

*HJI’s “Monday Morning MIL” columns appear weekly on Monday mornings with updates on local sports in the Maui Interscholastic League and elsewhere around Maui County. Please send column ideas — anything having to do with sports in Maui County — as well as results and photos to rob@hjinow.org.