MIL Division I football preview: Can Baldwin or Maui High break Lahainaluna’s 17-year title streak?

When the new Maui Interscholastic League Division I football season begins in a week, Lahainaluna High School will be going for its 18th consecutive division championship, and fifth in a row in Division I.

The challenge? They’ll have to do it with the loss of 27 seniors.

“We don’t have a whole lot of experience,” Lahainaluna head coach Dean Rickard said. “Now, we’ve got a lot of the younger players that need to step up to the plate.”

The Lunas are coming off championship seasons, but they have not come easy. In 2023, they started two months late due to the devastating wildfire; and last year it took a dramatic goal-line stand at the end of the game to beat Baldwin 7-3 in a championship playoff game to keep their streak alive.

Last year, the once dominating Lunas had their MIL record 46-game league win streak that stretched over seven years come to an end with a 23-0 loss to Kamehameha Maui on Sept. 14. The finished 6-5, falling 40-13 to Leilehua in the Division I state tournament.

Baldwin and Maui high schools, the other two teams in MIL Division I, would like nothing better than to end the Lunas’ division title streak.

To prevent that, the Lunas will employ their familiar game plan, leaning on their senior leadership and small, quick ballcarriers and defenders to carry on the tradition at the 174-year-old school. But it will be a small group of experienced leadership, with only 13 seniors.

The Lunas had just 813 students for the 2024-25 school year, a drop of 20% from the 1,012 that were enrolled on Aug. 7, 2023, the day before the wildfire. In 2023, the Lunas had a varsity roster of 47, and last season, they had 46 players. While the school’s enrollment is slightly up this year at 827, the current varsity football roster has only 41 players.

At the top of the list of young players needing to step up for the Lunas is sophomore quarterback Leka Rosenthal. He was 2-for-6 passing for 26 yards and an interception against Oʻahu’s Waiʻanae Seariders in their non-league season-opening 41-21 loss on Saturday night.

Also expecting to play a key role this year is Joseph Arcangel, one of four returning starters on offense for Lahainaluna. The others are all linemen: Sola Kauvaka, Tua Olakauatu and Kden Pu.

At 5-foot-4, 150 pounds, Arcangel epitomizes a Lahainaluna football player. With 66 rushing yards on 14 carries, he was the leading ballcarrier among seven in the loss to Waiʻanae.

“I’m ready for anything that comes my way,” Arcangel said. “I just want to help the team and be a team player.”

Arcangel is well aware of the remarkable string of MIL championships that the team nicknamed the “Red Tide from the West Side” has to its credit.

“It means a lot and it’s important because the school has been known for winning and we want to keep it that way,” Arcangel said.

Kyle Thomas, a 5-8, 160-pound junior, returned a kickoff 80 yards to the end zone for the Lunas’ first touchdown on Saturday, cutting their deficit to 28-6 late in the first half.

On defense, the Lunas’ returning starters are Kauvaka on the defensive line, Thomas and Kua Bacalso at defensive back, and Brayden Valencia at linebacker. Bacalso and Thomas were the only two freshmen on the varsity roster in 2023.

“We learned to just keep pushing no matter the score,” Thomas said of the Waiʻanae game. “Going into halftime we were losing already by a lot, but it doesn’t mean that we just stop there. Because as you could see we just kept on going.”

Thomas added, “Now it’s my turn to step up. It’s really important to keep the culture up. I feel that we can be just as good as all the teams that won everything.”

Kauvaka, a 6-2, 290-pound junior who has a scholarship offer to play football from the University of Idaho, said: “I really like the heart of this team and the dedication, too.”

The Maui Interscholastic League includes Division II Kamehameha Schools Maui and King Kekaulike High School. The league plays an eight-game double round-robin schedule where all the teams play each other twice. 

All the games count in the standings that are broken into two rounds of play. If there are different round champions in either division, those teams play off for the single division spot to their respective state tournaments.

Rickard said the Lunas will be ready for their MIL opener when they host King Kekaulike on Aug. 29, in large part due to the competition they are facing in the preseason.

“We’re always looking to play up so that it’ll make us better prepared when we go through our MIL season, especially when you look at teams like Kamehameha, Baldwin, Maui High,” Rickard said.

Rickard added that the championship string has not easy to keep going. While the Lunas’ last four MIL division crowns have come at the Division I level, the previous 13 came at the Division II level. 

Lahainaluna’s assignment gets tougher this week when the Lunas travel to Kapolei to face the open division Hurricanes. Kapolei beat Lahainaluna 42-12 last season in Lahaina.

Baldwin last won the MIL Division I championship in 2019, just before Lahainaluna moved up from Division II in 2021. The Bears suffered a 22-game losing streak that began in 2022, but they broke the skid last season with a 6-3 record that ended on the door step of a return to the state tournament — a fumble on the Lunas’ 1-yard line ended Baldwin’s chances in the 7-3 playoff loss to Lahainaluna in the final minute.

“That was on our seniors’ minds going into the season,” Baldwin coach Cody Nakamura said. “They went into summer training knowing they didn’t want to be the senior class that also finished 1 yard short. So I think they pushed 1 yard extra on everything we did, which was nice to see. They want to finish the job this year. We say ‘1 yard’ a lot in practice.”

The Bears started with a 17-13 win over Hilo on Hawaiʻi Island on Friday and showed some encouraging signs on both sides of the ball. Senior quarterback Jordan Carbonell kicked a 26-yard field goal on the final play of the first half to give Baldwin a 3-0 lead at the break.

Carbonell finished 11-for-20 passing for 143 yards with one touchdown and one interception. Hiilawe Han had four receptions for 44 yards and a touchdown, and Max Kushi rushed 12 times for 132 yards and a touchdown.

The play of the game for Baldwin came from Leroy Kahalewai, a senior defensive back who chased down Hilo quarterback Austin Aguiar after a long run. Kahalewai caught Aguiar and forced a fumble just before Aguiar reached the end zone with a score that would have given the Vikings a 14-3 lead. The Bears recovered the ball in the end zone.

“Leroy made a spectacular play that you can’t coach,” Nakamura said. “He just wants it. That play was definitely a game changer.”

Nakamura sees the MIL as a wide-open race, especially in the Division I ranks. The Bears are off this weekend and start MIL play with a game on Aug. 23 at Kamehameha Maui, the defending D-II state champion.

“I’ve been saying it for the last few years — this is a tough league,” Nakamura said. “It’s whoever has the better night, but everybody could have a good night at the same time. So it’s whoever prepares better throughout the week. Anybody can beat anybody.”

Maui High came away with the largest margin of victory for the MIL that went a collective 3-2 on the opening weekend — the Sabers beat Kealakehe 21-6 at King Kekaulike Stadium on Saturday. 

Senior quarterback Kahlen Boteilho-Dougherty ran 14 times for 89 yards and a game-clinching 4-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. He was 16-for-30 passing for 227 yards and two touchdowns to fellow senior Jonah Cariaga. Micah Barut ran 11 times for 62 yards.

“We definitely did great, but there’s certain stuff that we definitely need to work on, like consistency and making the first read,” Boteilho-Dougherty said. “The simple stuff.”

Pohai Lee, a former head coach at Baldwin, is in his first season as the Sabers’ head coach. The Sabers travel to Oʻahu to face ‘Iolani on Saturday.

“I saw a lot of good things and a lot of mistakes that could have added to more points in what we were striving to do,” Lee said of the Kealakehe game. “In terms of procedural things, we’ve got to get to the line quicker, got to wrap better on defense and just sharpen up on everything in terms of assignments and alignments.”

The Sabers open MIL play on Aug. 22 at King Kekaulike. 

Maui High returns four starters on each side of the ball and Lee knows the game Saturday on Oʻahu will be a “huge challenge.”

“‘Iolani, they are well-conditioned, well-coached, they get a lot out of their kids, similar to what Lahainaluna does,” Lee said. “Undersized, but they can run and they’re very disciplined.”

Lee said he likes what he sees so far from a team that finished 2-6 last season.

“We’re progressing well so far,” Lee said. “I think the attitude has gotten a lot better. We just have to strive for what we’re wanting to do and take each day as it comes, get better each game as it comes.”