Baseball

Oregon State junior KJ Harrison, a Punahou alumnus, was selected in the third round of the 2017 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft as the 84th overall pick of the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday. Harrison, who was the Pac-12 freshman of the year in 2015 and played for Team USA twice, is hitting .330 with 13 doubles, eight homers and 39 RBIs for the No. 1-ranked Beavers, who will play in the College World Series beginning Saturday. Harrison homered twice […]

Keenan Sue says China is simply unlike anything he has seen. The Punahou baseball team was en route to Nanjing to play with more teams. Sue, the varsity baseball coach at Punahou, is with the team on a tour that has taken the Buffanblu to different locations to play against teams from Major League Baseball academies. Punahou has 67 players and parents on the voyage. “The cultural experience we’ve had thus far has been amazing,” Sue texted on Friday night, […]

Micah Jio is one part of the formula that led the Maui Sabers — the second-place-in-the-Maui-Interscholastic-League Maui Sabers — to the 2017 state baseball championship. Jio’s versatile skills were a huge asset in that equation, and his clutch play at the state tourney opened the eyes of voters on the Star-Advertiser All-State panel, who voted him position player of the year. The senior was a three-year standout at shortstop, but made the move to center field at the request of […]

The season chugged along, a gauntlet of merciless forays in the wickedly difficult Interscholastic League of Honolulu. Sure, Mid-Pacific was extremely young. They could take down a seasoned foe by meticulous means. ‘Iolani? Very scary, particularly for any opponent who considered the Raiders a peg down from the top. At that peak level, it was Saint Louis, Punahou and Kamehameha vying for not just an ILH crown, but a state-tournament berth. During that crescendo to the finish, the teams with […]

Micah Jio, Maui’s artful center fielder, and left-hander Dawson Yamaguchi, Saint Louis’ ace of aces, collected the most votes from a panel of coaches and media and were named the Honolulu Star-Advertiser position player and pitcher of the year award winners today. The complete 2017 All-State baseball teams were released in Sunday’s newspaper. Jio was steady and occasionally spectacular on the field, at the plate and on the basepaths as Maui rose from unseeded entrant to state champion at the […]

Baseball season is over, but the accolades are piling up for Kailua scholar-athlete Joey Cantillo. The fire-balling pitcher/first baseman was selected by Gatorade as the Hawaii baseball player of the year. Cantillo, a southpaw, went 5-1 with a 1.24 ERA and a whopping 71 strikeouts in 45 2/3 innings. He also batted .517 with two home runs, 23 RBIs, 12 runs scored and a slugging percentage of .700. He led the state in strikeouts as a pitcher and RBIs as […]

The Interscholastic League of Honolulu released its baseball all-star teams on Monday as voted on by league coaches. In Division I, Saint Louis shortstop Keith Torres was named most valuable player and the Crusaders’ George Gusman was coach of the year after leading Saint Louis to its first ILH title since 2011. In Division II, Damien freshman shortstop Jordan Donahue and St. Francis’ Jarred Yara shared most valuable player honors with the Monarchs’ Timo Donahue winning coach of the year […]

The state baseball tournament is usually as unpredictable as any state championship event of the year. Even in a world where eight different schools have been crowned Division I state champion in the last eight years, Maui’s run from third place in the MIL regular season to Saturday night’s 6-1 win over Waiakea in the state final is truly one of the most remarkable four-day runs a team has had in the state tournament. Mikito Barkman, the tournament’s most outstanding […]