Baseball Heads to States

Coach Mike McCutcheon has led the Molokai High baseball team to the Hawaii State Championships for the first time since 2008. Despite only playing six regular season games, he said that the team has made an incredible improvement since the preseason began. 

 “It’s been a long journey since pre-season when we committed 15 errors, and in our last game we only committed one,” McCutcheon said.

The fifth-seeded Farmers (5-3) will fly to Oahu to play against the fourth-seeded Radford Rams (10-3) at 1:30 p.m. this Thursday at Hans L’Orange Field. If they win, they will play on Friday at 7 p.m.  If they lose, they will play at 10 a.m. on Friday morning. Championship games will be played Saturday.

After beating Seabury Hall twice at the Maui Interscholastic Tournament, with a score of 16-1 in the first game and 10-2 in the second game. Kaoli Place had a phenomenal pitching performance in the second game by striking out 12 batters.

Two of their regular season games this season were forfeited by the Lanai Pine Lads.

“It was unfortunate that Lanai pulled out. The amount of games we played was the only downfall,” McCutcheon said.

He recalled playing 15 to 16 games when he was a player at Molokai High School.

“I didn’t think I’d have the success I’ve had,” McCutcheon said, a first year coach. “But I had a great assistant coach, Ahi Meyer, and our team was just coachable. They were really open to us and bought into what we were trying to accomplish.”

He is looking forward to the state championships this weekend on Oahu, and seeing Molokai support on the road.

“It sounds like we have a few groups of families going over. So I think we’ll have a nice crowd to support our guys,” he said.