Monday Morning Maui Sports: Wehiwa Aloy wins Golden Spikes Award as best amateur baseball player in nation

Wehiwa Aloy knows he wouldn’t have been named the winner of the Golden Spikes Award, presented to the best amateur baseball player in the nation, without his younger brother Kuhio Aloy pushing him for their entire lives.

The Aloy boys — Wehiwa is a 2022 Baldwin High School graduate, and Kuhio followed a year later — celebrated Wehiwa being presented the award prior to Game 1 of the NCAA Men’s College World Series championship series between Louisiana State and Coastal Carolina on Saturday in Omaha, Neb.

The Aloys were both standouts on the University of Arkansas baseball team this season, leading the Razorbacks to the Men’s College World Series, where they were eliminated on Wednesday by LSU in the semifinals. Both were Southeastern Conference first-team all-stars. Wehiwa Aloy, a junior shortstop, was also the SEC Player of the Year and a finalist for the Brooks Wallace Award for the nation’s best shortstop and Dick Howser Trophy national player of the year award.

He is the first Mauian to win the Golden Spikes Award and will likely be the first from the Valley Isle to be selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft next month.

“No, I don’t think I would be here without my team, especially my brother,” Wehiwa Aloy said via phone Saturday evening with his family gathered round him. “My team has helped me a lot this past year and just kind of creating a very big bond with them, being all close with each other, doing the stuff off the field together, that’s helped a lot.”

Kuhio Aloy, a designated hitter, transferred to Arkansas for this season after spending his freshman season at Brigham Young University in 2024. Wehiwa Aloy had just one NCAA Division I scholarship offer out of Baldwin, spending his freshman season at Sacramento State before transferring to Arkansas prior to the 2024 season.

Wehiwa Aloy hit .350 with 19 doubles, 21 home runs and 68 runs batted in in 65 games. Kuhio Aloy hit .317 with 13 doubles, 15 homers and 70 RBIs in 61 games.

Both brothers realize the 2025 season when they were roommates and teammates for the first time since the 2022 season with Baldwin will likely be the last time they will be on the same team. Wehiwa Aloy is projected to become the first Mauian to be selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft when it takes place in Atlanta, Ga., July 13-14. 

Kuhio Aloy said Saturday that he intends to return to Arkansas for his junior season after which he will be draft eligible.

“It’s a blessing, especially to do it in the SEC at the college level, it’s just an honor to be able to play with him,” said Kuhio Aloy, who thanked his brother through a 61-second video posted on the Arkansas baseball X page. “And just being around the teammates I had this year and just him being such a good example, not just for me, but for all the other young athletes.”

When asked how much he would miss Wehiwa next year, Kuhio said: “A lot, a lot. It’s never going to be the same.”

Wehiwa Aloy added, “It was very special. We grew up playing together in the same household all our lives, so it was nothing different.”

Kuhio Aloy was confident his older brother would hear his name announced on ESPN as the Golden Spikes winner Saturday: “Oh yeah, I expected him to win the award every single day. Every single day.”

Wehiwa Aloy has arguably enjoyed the best college season ever for a Mauian, at least since Kurt Suzuki, a 2001 Baldwin graduate, was the Johnny Bench Award winner as the nation’s best catcher, the Brooks Wallace Award winner, and a national champion for Cal State Fullerton in 2004. 

Suzuki went on to be a second-round draft choice of the Oakland A’s, a major league All-Star in 2014 for the Minnesota Twins, and a world champion for the Washington Nationals in 2019. He retired in 2022 after a 16-year major league career.

While in Omaha, the Aloys were visited by Shane Victorino, a 1999 St. Anthony High School graduate and 12-year major leaguer who won two World Series titles, in 2008 with Philadelphia Phillies and in 2013 with the Boston Red Sox. He also won four Gold Gloves before retiring in 2015.

Wehiwa Aloy is aware that he could become the fifth Major Leaguer ever from Maui — Antone Rego was the first for the St. Louis Browns in 1924 and 1925, and Victorino, Suzuki and pitcher Kanekoa Texeira are the others. Aloy is proud to be providing goals for current Maui baseball players to follow.

“Back home baseball is different,” Wehiwa Aloy said. “We play with a lot of family and we’re all playing baseball together. … It was very cool, just putting Hawai‘i on the map. Now the Maui kids have something to strive for. And I hope it just gives them even more courage to go out there and put in the hard work for baseball.”

With younger sister, 14-year-old Kiani, in the crowd along with father Jamie Aloy and mother Napua Aloy, Wehiwa said he repeated a message on Saturday that he has told his sister many times before. 

Kiani Aloy will be a freshman at Kamehameha Schools Maui in the fall — she plays softball and volleyball.

“Do it better than us, that’s what I tell her all the time,” Wehiwa Aloy said.

Jamie Aloy, a state champion at Baldwin in 1995 who went on to a stellar career for the University of Hawai‘i has been to Fayetteville, Ark., “it feels like every weekend” this season.

Jamie Aloy said he wouldn’t trade the experience of the magical run that his sons have provided to the family this season.

“Oh, it’s been unreal. It’s been an awesome rollercoaster ride this year with both boys for the University of Arkansas,” Jamie Aloy said. “And we’ve been basically enjoying every second of it.”

The bottom line for Jamie Aloy is that his sons become good men. He was their head coach for the 2016 state Little League champions at the Majors (11-12) Division from Central East Maui Little League. They were eliminated in the West Regional, but that experience was part of the building blocks that have built the Aloy boys into who they are now.

ESPN baseball commentator Karl Ravech remembered both of the Aloy boys from that Little League team when he saw them at the Men’s College World Series last week.

“People know the type of ballplayers they are, and they talk about it,” Jamie Aloy said. “But the one thing my wife and I hear constantly, not only in Arkansas or home or out here in Omaha, is that they’re good people. And at the end of the day, as parents, that’s what we want. Good people.”

“Monday Morning Maui Sports” 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.