Castle coach Nelson Maeda, who just completed his 20th season in charge of the Knights, talked openly about not quite getting the most out of all the pieces.
“It’s disappointing,” he said after a 49-7 loss to Moanalua in the OIA first round. “We had the potential to go further and do better, but we just couldn’t quite jell as a team and that’s the frustrating part.”
The Knights were only down by 14 points at the half and came close to cutting the gap to 7 early in the second half.
Maeda has seen incremental improvement record-wise. Castle’s record of 4-5 overall and 3-4 is a positive trend, compared to: 3-6 and 3-4 in 2015, 2-6 and 2-5 in 2014, and 3-6 and 2-4 in 2013.
What’s more is that Castle scored a program-lifting 24-21 victory over arch rival Kailua in the regular-season finale.
“That was a sweet win,” Maeda, who started his coaching career in charge of the Surfriders, said at the time.
Along with that win came the Hammer Trophy, which is sponsored by Hardware Hawaii and was created in the middle of the last decade and had been in the possession of former Surfriders head coach Gary Rosolowich before making its way into Castle’s possession. That perpetual trophy, which goes to the winner of the rivalry game each year, is engraved with all of the winners of the Kailua-Castle game for the last 61 years back to 1955. Kailua holds a 35-28 edge in the 63 games that have been played.
That’s a nice trophy to play for. It’s good for the schools, communities, alumni, and current players.MCC9