Monday Morning MIL: King Kekaulike wins record-setting offensive shootout, 68-41, over a Morro Bay team led by former Maui family

PUKALANI — It was homecoming night for Robert Dougherty and Sands Dougherty as they returned to Maui with their Morro Bay High School football team on Saturday night at King Kekaulike Stadium.

Robert, the head coach, and his son Sands, the senior quarterback for the Central California team, went up against the home team King Kekaulike High School in a record-breaking offensive explosion that the Upcountry public school has never experienced before. Na Ali‘i beat the Pirates 68-41 in a game that broke numerous records, including the King Kekaulike High School record for points scored and the prep football record for total points in a game on Maui.

King Kekaulike beat Pac-3 67-13 in 2006, which was the previous high point mark for Na Ali‘i who started playing football in 1995, according to state football historian Stacy Kaneshiro. The 109 total points scored in the game broke the record of 106 in Baldwin’s 59-47 win over Kamehameha Maui in 2017.

While the Pirates were piling up 88% of their 528 yards of offense through the air, Na Ali‘i were riding a school-record rushing mark of 268 yards by Wayne Kahula to a total of 487 yards of offense, including 85% on the ground. 

Current King Kekaulike assistant coach Dennis Dias, a former head coach for the program, said Kahula’s rushing yards total is a school record and his five touchdowns tied a school record set by Danny Scott in 2002.

Kahula, a 6-foot, 170-pound junior running back, admitted he surprised himself a bit with his breakout performance. He was fast to credit his teammates.

“Just everybody doing their assignment on the field. Everything was right. I just felt really good tonight,” Kahula said. “If it wasn’t for my team, I wouldn’t have been doing what I’m doing. So, thank you to all my teammates.”

King Kekaulike’s Nainoa Mata ran seven times for 118 yards and a touchdown; and quarterback Kingston Goliday was 5-for-8 passing for 74 yards and a 37-yard touchdown to Cason Brooke, who finished with three catches for 59 yards.

Goliday was impressed with the Morro Bay team that traveled with just 28 players and appeared to tire at times during the game.

“Man, I would hate to play against our defense,” Goliday said. “So, yeah, they have some heart. Coming all the way from California to be here in a different environment, I give them props.”

Sands Dougherty piled up 462 yards in the air and five touchdowns passes while playing against a team as familiar to him as any he has ever faced. He played in King Kekaulike’s youth football programs before moving to California prior to his freshman year.

“I would say I know every single junior and senior (on the King Kekaulike team),” Sands Dougherty said. ”The sophomores, there’s a couple of sophomores I know, but I at least know like 30, 35 kids for sure.”

Sands Dougherty is currently being recruited by the University of San Diego, Fresno State, Cal Poly, and Florida A&M, along with several smaller schools.

The team stayed at the Maui Coast Hotel in Kīhei and relied on Costco for much of their food to keep costs down. Robert Dougherty said the team raised $70,000 over the last couple years to fund the trip. 

After arriving on Wednesday midday, they visited Haleakalā for sunrise Thursday morning.

While he wanted to win the game, Sands Dougherty said, “it’s awesome to see my friends again, but during the game, I’m not really thinking about it. I’m trying to win and play, but we talked a little bit, here and there in the game.”

Sands Dougherty will never forget the trip, where he served as an unofficial tour guide much of the time.

“It was awesome to come home, but it was more awesome to be here with my second family, which is my football teammates, and show them around,” he said. 

The hard-hitting game was the culmination of a trip planned for a few years, ever since Robert Dougherty took the job at Morro Bay, in May 2022. Last season, the Pirates reached the Division 5 championship game of the California Interscholastic Federation Central Section, losing 32-28 to Selma. They finished 7-7 last season, according to MaxPreps.

In three seasons, Robert Dougherty has a 19-21 record at Morro Bay, which has a student enrollment of 773 this year.

Robert Dougherty was the Seabury Hall athletic director from 2013-19 and was hired as football coach at Maui High School in November 2019 — he coached one year as head football coach at Maui High in 2021, going 4-2 in a season shortened by COVID-19 after the 2020 season was wiped out by the pandemic.

Mom Allison (Rawe) Dougherty is a 1989 graduate of Seabury Hall and grew up on Maui.

King Kekaulike coach Tyson Valle certainly remembers the Doughertys, from Robert’s time at Maui High and Sands’ time with the feeder programs to King Kekaulike.

“When he called and said he was up there, coming back looking for a game back home, I was like, ‘absolutely, let’s do it,’ “ Valle said. “He has strong ties to Maui. So, it was good to see him again and see the team he’s coaching now. It was good to see him again, him and Sands.”

Morro Bay pulled within 55-41 with just under 5 minutes to play when Colten Rosenlieb recovered a fumble in end zone for a touchdown.

Goliday quickly handed the ball to Kahula on the next possession and Kahula closed the door on any comeback thoughts by the Pirates with his fifth touchdown, a 23-yard scamper with 2:35 to play.

“Wow, he showed me a way different guy,” Goliday said of his backfield mate. “I really depended on him today when we needed that extra first (down) or he was just there and things weren’t really clicking. He kind of just held it together for us.”

Na Ali‘i bounced back from a sluggish offensive performance in a 9-7 win at Honoka‘a on Aug. 9. Valle said there’s more in the tank.

“We have a lot of weapons and we definitely didn’t expose them all tonight,” Valle said. “It just wasn’t necessary. I mean, at a certain point, we just kept running the same play.”

King Kekaulike was the only Maui Interscholastic League team to finish 2-0 in preseason play. They open MIL play when Maui High visits Friday and Baldwin will be at Kamehameha Maui on Aug. 23. 

Maui High (1-1) lost 35-0 at ‘Iolani on Saturday, Kamehameha Maui (1-1) beat Radford 53-14 on Saturday, Lahainaluna (0-2) lost 52-0 at Kapolei on Saturday and Baldwin (1-0) was idle.

At the end of the week, Na Ali‘i and the Pirates sat down to share a potluck prepared by the King Kekaulike parents. It was a fitting end to a week of feeling at home. Only three of the Pirates had ever been to Hawai‘i and more than half had never been on an airplane.

“Now they get to experience potluck, which they don’t do that in the mainland,” Robert Dougherty said. “So it’s neat for them to see a different kind of culture, what they value. And so it’s cool.”

“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.