Monday Morning MIL: Defending champion Kamehameha Maui rolls into Division II state football tournament as ‘best team on Maui’

As Pa‘u Spencer stood in line as one of 19 seniors for the Kamehameha Schools Maui football team Friday night at Kana‘iaupuni Stadium, he thought of the past and the future. 

He remembered his older brother Kale Spencer, now a standout volleyball player at Long Island University. Karsyn Pupunu, Frank Kahoa Abreu and Kapena Gushiken all came to mind for Pa‘u Spencer as well.

All of these players were standouts in what has been a dominant run over the last few years for Kamehameha Maui, which rolled to a 27-7 win over Lahainaluna on Friday night at Kana‘iaupuni Stadium to clinch another trip to the state tournament with a 3-0 record in the second round of Maui Interscholastic League play — the Warriors were already the first-round champions in Division II with a 4-0 record.

“It’s kind of like a breath of fresh air. I’ve been waiting 18 years for this,” Spencer said. “I’ve been dreaming of this. It’s really special to come out with a win and come out as D-II champs.”

Kamehameha Maui has been to three of the last four Division II state championship games and won the school’s first state football title last year.

The Warriors will finish its regular season against King Kekaulike on Oct. 24.

“They’ve told us that, okay, we’ve qualified for this,” Warriors head coach Ulima Afoa said of the state tournament. “But we still have one final opponent left. And obviously, it’s the opponent across the street. So you want to show up and pay respect to them.”

As defending Division II state champions and with an 8-1 overall record, the Warriors know they can anticipate a top-two seed and a bye into the Division II state semifinals that will be held on the weekend of Nov. 21-22. That means that their regular-season finale on Friday will be their final game for a month.

“That’s the most important game in your life right now because that’s the one you’ve got to play,” Afoa said of his message to his players this week.

Pa‘u Spencer, a 6-foot-4, 295-pound offensive lineman who has a football scholarship offer from the University of Hawai‘i in hand and is being looked at by several other schools, smiled as he looked at the 18 other seniors that he has helped build the Kamehameha Maui program with under Afoa and staff.

“I just thank the man above for giving me all these brothers, these 18 boys, and just blessing my life,” he said.

Afoa, a 66-year-old football coaching lifer who has seen dozens of senior nights at the college and high school levels, couldn’t help but smile when asked about the program’s recent success stories.

Pupunu, a University of Hawai‘i senior wide receiver, is a shining example of the development of the Kamehameha Maui program in Afoa’s 10 years at the helm. Pupunu started his college career at Weber State in 2020, struggled through some significant health issues, and walked on at the University of Hawai‘i in 2021.

On Saturday, Pupunu matched a career-high with five receptions and set a career high with 56 yards receiving in the Rainbow Warriors’ 31-19 win over Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colo., that moved UH to 6-2 on the season and made the Rainbow Warriors bowl eligible for the first time since 2021.

Pupunu, a native of Lahaina, lost four family members in the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfire and was finally awarded a UH scholarship at a surprise party at his home last December during Christmas break. 

Now, Pupunu is a starter and stands third on the Rainbow Warriors with 25 receptions on the year. He had 11 career receptions coming into the 2025 season. UH was 3-10, 5-8, and 5-7 in the first three seasons under current head coach Timmy Chang, a former standout quarterback for the team.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Pupunu said moments after landing in Honolulu on Sunday afternoon. “Obviously it took us quite a couple of years to get to where we’re at today.”

Pupunu redshirted as a member of the scout team at UH in 2021, the season before Chang arrived.

“When coach Chang came in to the program I felt that was just a very different place and to see what coach Chang has built and what the players and my teammates have trusted in over the past couple of years, is truly amazing,” Pupunu said. “I feel like we’re very blessed and fortunate to be in the position we are this year.”

Fellow 2020 Kamehameha Maui graduate Kapena Gushiken is now a starting safety for the University of Mississippi and had six tackles in the Rebels’ 45-35 loss to Georgia on Saturday. 

Gushiken started his college career at Saddleback Junior College in California and then played two seasons at Washington State before transferring to Ole Miss.

Gushiken, a senior safety, has 25 tackles on the season. Gushiken and Pupunu remember their days in Pukalani and the respect is mutual, according to Pupunu.

“He was one of my best friends in high school.” Pupunu said. “Just to see the journey that he’s been on is quite mind-blowing as well.”

Pupunu said that the battles in practice used to be epic when the two would go one-on-one, receiver vs. defensive back, on the Kana‘iaupuni turf. 

They keep up as best they can during a busy season. Ole Miss came into their loss to Georgia ranked No. 5 in the nation.

“I try to shoot him a text every once in a while, but when we come home on breaks we usually try and meet up with all the boys from Kamehameha Maui,” Pupunu said. “Both of us weren’t really recruited at all and him going to junior college and just trusting in himself, believing in himself and to see that hard work pay off has been huge for him. I’m proud of him.”

Frank Kahoa Abreu, a 2024 Kamehameha Maui graduate, is a freshman tight end at UH. His younger brother Frank Kapohai Abreu is a standout junior on the Warriors defense this year.

Afoa, who was an assistant coach at UH in 1995 and 1996, and San Diego State University from 1982-93 and 1997 to 2001, has also been a head coach for high schools at Kamehameha Hawai‘i and Steel Canyon in California. Now, his Warriors in Pukalani are on a roll.

“We’re starting to put those kind of kids out,” Afoa said of Pa‘u Spencer, Abreu, Pupunu and Gushiken. “And I think we’ve been kind of flying under the radar, but as our program becomes more consistent people are gonna want to find out what our talent looks like. So, it’s a positive for everybody.”

Kamehameha Maui left no doubt who was the best team in the MIL this season, outscoring seven opponents 266-63 with just one game left on the slate. Over the past two seasons, Kamehameha Maui is 14-1 against MIL opponents.

That positive streak now includes three wins in a row against Lahainaluna, including a 23-0 victory on Sept. 14, 2024, that broke the Lunas’ league-record 46-game, eight-year win streak against MIL opponents.

Saturday’s outcome was convincing, especially glancing at the statistics. Kamehameha Maui out-gained Lahainaluna 330 yards to 131, had an 18-6 advantage in first downs, and a 2-0 advantage in takeaways.

All of that domination for the Warriors came with two long touchdown runs called back on penalties and the state’s leading rusher Zedekaiah Campbell, who has 686 yards on 75 carries (9.1 yards per carry), on the sideline due to a shoulder injury. Campbell, last season’s Division II state player of the year for scoringlive.com, also has 14 touchdowns (12 rushing, 1 reception, 1 kickoff return) in six games played. 

“We got really banged up, which just shows you the physicality of Kamehameha,” Lahainaluna coach Dean Rickard said. “They’re a great, great team. We all want to represent Maui, and they can represent Maui in Division II, but right now, they’re the best team on Maui.”

Lahainaluna has been to 17 straight state tournaments, in Division II from 2007 to 2019, and to the last four in Division I. There were no state tournaments played in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Lunas were Division II state champions four times in a row, from 2016 to 2019. Now, their remarkable state tournament streak comes down to needing to beat Baldwin twice — on Saturday to claim the second-round MIL Division I crown and then in a playoff game Nov. 7 or 8.

Baldwin took the MIL D-I first-round championship with a 42-12 win over Lahainaluna on Sept. 20. Both teams finished the first round 2-2, but the Bears claimed the title on the head-to-head tiebreaker. Now, both teams go into Saturday’s regular-season finale 2-1 in the second round.

Baldwin beat Maui High 41-0 on Saturday night at King Kekaulike Stadium behind three touchdown passes by Jorden Carbonell — 20 yards to Ryan Coppa, 33 yards to Hi’ilawe Han, and 25 yards to Cooper Watkins. Ka‘ea‘ea Kealoha had touchdown runs of 1 and 35 yards and Kaniela Gragas added a 1-yard touchdown run for the Bears.

Rickard remembers that the Lunas won their 17th MIL division title in a row last year with a hard-fought 7-3 win over the Bears in a playoff game where Baldwin had the ball at the Lunas’ 1-yard line in the final seconds.

“We know what’s at stake next week,” Rickard said. “If we win, we get a playoff, and that’s what we need.”

“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.