Monday Morning MIL: Sabers, Lunas to meet in unbeaten showdown in girls basketball

The Lahainaluna High School girls basketball team dominated the Maui Interscholastic League like no other team ever did in any sport, winning 19 league titles in a row from 2005 to 2024.

But last season, Maui High School broke the Lunas’ hold on the league, winning the MIL Division I girls basketball championship for the first time since 1999.

With both the Sabers and the Lunas currently 6-0 in MIL play, the stakes will be high when they meet for the first time this season at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Lahainaluna gym.

While the Lunas will be trying to regain the MIL title this season that was theirs for two decades, Maui High will try to make school history with a second straight league title.

The Lady Lunas won an MIL all-sports record 164 league games in a row from 2007 to 2019 — it was an era of dominance that also included the 2010 state championship, the only Division I state basketball title ever for an MIL team, boys or girls.

This year, the Lunas are perhaps as young as they have ever been — their roster of eight players includes six freshmen and two sophomores. The MIL’s leading scorer, Division I or Division II, is Lahainaluna’s Honor Kaniho, who averages 18.4 points per game, 6 points better than anyone else in the league.

“We’re super young, so maybe we are just a little bit too young to understand that we’re not supposed to be good yet,” said Lunas coach Iolani Kaniho, who is uncle to sisters Honor and Constance Kaniho on the roster. “I’m hoping that’s the case.”

Iolani Kaniho added, “they’re young, but they’ve been together for a few years now because they started playing together in middle school. … They understand our system.”

The 12-game MIL regular season finishes with two games between the pair of rivals, on Jan. 20 and 23, 2026. The MIL tournament is at Lahainaluna gym Jan. 24, 26-27, 2026, with a possible overall championship game tentatively scheduled for Jan. 28, 2026. 

The regular-season champion clinches one of the MIL’s two state berths, while the other berth will be decided in the tournament. 

If the regular-season and tournament champions are different, those two teams would play for the overall league crown and bye in the state tournament that goes with it. That means Tuesday could be the first of up to five meetings between the Sabers and Lunas.

“This team, we can definitely go far,” Maui High senior guard Naiara Bal, the only senior on either team, said Friday at practice. “I feel like we have a lot of potential.”

Bal averages a team-best 12 points per game, third-best in the MIL. She is leaning towards attending Pacific University, an NCAA Division III school in Forest Grove, Ore., to continue her basketball career. 

Bal will be the latest Saber girl to play college basketball.

Kayla Thornton, the 2022 MIL Division I Player of the Year for Maui High, is playing her redshirt sophomore season of college basketball at NCAA Division II Central Washington, where she has started all 11 games for the Wildcats.

Former Sabers Jordyn Luna and Kiana Manuel are both at Western Wyoming Junior College, and Kyra Okuyama is at Green River (Wash.) Community College. Luna, Manuel and Okuyama were home for the holidays and were at practice on Friday. 

Bal has been hanging around the Izumi “Shine” Matsui Athletic Center, Maui High’s gym, before she could even walk. Her grandfather Gilbert Silva was a veteran head coach of the Sabers when Bal was growing up — she was often seen on the Maui High court at halftime and between games dribbling and shooting as young as 4 years old.

Now, college basketball is less than a year away for Bal.

“Ever since I was younger, I always had the love for basketball, and growing up around a family that loved sports, I feel like that’s always been my goal,” Bal said of college basketball. 

To leave the island with back-to-back MIL championship gold medals, something the Sabers have never done in girls basketball, would make it even sweeter for Bal.

“It’s really important because winning MIL last year, I feel like we are just getting better,” Bal said.

Darsee Seegmiller, a fellow captain with Bal who averages 11.2 points per game, is one of eight juniors on the Maui High roster. Seegmiller is trying to learn all she can from Bal.

“It’s been a lot of learning,” Seegmiller said. “I’m trying to pick her brain and see what she does. So by the time she leaves, we’re still going to have a team and I’ll be able to fill her spot.”

The Sabers’ other team captain is sophomore Aliyah Spencer, who averages 7.6 points per game.

“They’re always driving me to be better and they’re just such amazing role models and … I want to play just like them,” Spencer said of Bal and Seegmiller.

Maui High coach Victor Aguirre pointed to the Sabers’ 4-2 preseason, reasoning that his team could be better than last year when they went 14-0 in the MIL and lost two close games at the state tournament. 

“Well, early on, we went to the Imua Tournament and they held their own against (Kamehameha Schools) Kapālama and Maryknoll,” Aguirre said. “So the potential is really high.”

Iolani Kaniho said his young team is aware of the legacy of Lady Lunas teams that came before them and that the Sabers are now the queens of the MIL hill. During Lahainaluna’s remarkable MIL championship run, the Sabers joined them in the state tournament eight times.

“The rivalry itself has been going on for several years now,” Kaniho said. “I mean, we just were able to hold them off for like four or five years there. And then there was a couple of years that they almost got it from us.”

Kaniho added, “last year, we were just a little short. … The cupboard was empty and Maui High was just ready to go. Now, I hope we can compete with them, but with all the veteran returners that they have they’re the defending champs now, they’re the team to beat.”

“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.