New high school sports seasons bring new coaches, and there has been some changes in Hawaii for this winter.
One change Hawaii Prep World has learned about is for the the spring sport of baseball, where Wes Yonamine is the new head coach at Pearl City. He takes over for Peter Arakawa, who spent one year as the Chargers’ coach in place of the previous head man, Gavin Concepcion.
Getting back to winter sports, Shelley Izuno takes over for Starr Johnson with the Punahou girls varsity soccer team and she sounded really excited to take on the challenge. Izuno is a former coach with lower level Punahou girls soccer teams.
At McKinley, Shane Graf is the new girls soccer coach, taking over for Shelby Campanella, who stepped down to spend more time with her family, according to Tigers athletic director Bob Morikuni.
Lisa Russell is the new girls basketball coach at Mid-Pacific. Her most recent coaching experience was at Island Pacific Academy, where she was head varsity coach before she took a teaching job at Mid-Pacific Institute four years ago.
Russell, who played college basketball at West Point, also was an assistant at Moanalua and Hawaii Pacific University and a JV head coach at Radford.
There are also at least three new girls basketball coaches — Jordan Wong at Kaimuki, Tasha Lacey at Damien and William “BJ” Johnson at Waianae.
Wong takes over for longtime Bulldogs coach Mona Faasoa. A 2005 Kaimuki grad, he played basketball for the Bulldogs. Over the last three years, Wong was an assistant with the Kaiser boys varsity team.
Has Punahou School announced that Tita Ahuna will take over Girls Volleyball program?
Punahou has not won ILH in 6 years, since Peter Balding’s state championship teams in 2012-13 and have now missed states 4 years in a row, it’s surprising as Punahou has an abundance of talent as evidenced by multiple D1 scholarship players; 5 girls from class of 2017.