Sports

Raising on the Roof

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Other volunteers also ran fundraisers on Molokai during the same weekend. A table was set up outside Friendly Market for donations, and Kamoi Snack-N-Go collected coins at their free ice-cream give-away last week.The ice cream sale raised $216.02, and Molokai Drugs matched the funds for a total of $432.04.  

The money raised during this month’s fundraiser will be used to help send 20-some athletes to Oahu for the Special Olympics’ Holiday Classic this winter. Due to budget cuts, the event has been shortened from three days to two. If you missed the chance to donate this month, the group will still be accepting gifts at www.firstgiving.com/copontopmolokai through December.

Money Well Spent
Molokai athletes shined at the most recent Special Olympics event, the Aukake Classic held in Honolulu on Aug. 22. Molokai’s soccer team took home the gold medal after defeating the Anuenue team in the championship match.

“This is the third year in a row they have won it,” Igarta said. “I just love being able to watch them play.”

The team, which added two new women this year, won a total of four games in the tournament. Igarta, who has been with the program for four years, said a good part of their success was due to the Wednesday night practice sessions they hold along with other soccer players on the island.

“I’d like to really thank the people that come out on Wednesday nights and let us practice with them and play in real games,” she said. “That has definitely really improved our players.”
Molokai also brought home a handful on medals in bocce, the only other event at the Aukake games.

Sweating to Success

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Molokai High graduate leads Pacific University volleyball team

By Dan Murphy

When Kelsy Takashima played volleyball at Molokai High School, she would show up to practice every day with her sneakers, knee pads and a stack of clean t-shirts. At the end of day every single one of them would be drenched in sweat.

“She would change shirts every time we took a break at practice,” Molokai head coach Matt Helm said. “It just shows how hard she worked. She came everyday and literally gave it everything she had. She’s the type of player you dream of coaching.”

Takashima’s hard work has paid off. After graduating from Molokai High in 2008, she went to Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore. to play volleyball. Last year, Takashima became one of three freshmen in her school’s history to be named a first team All-Conference player as a freshman.

Farmers off to fast start

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

By Dan Murphy

If there were any doubts about Molokai’s volleyball team’s potential to repeat as Maui Interscholastic League (MIL) champions this season, the Farmers took care of that this weekend. Molokai jump started their regular season last weekend with three big wins on Maui.

“I was very pleased with what I saw,” head coach Matt Helm said. “The girls were ready to go.”

The Farmers started the season last Thursday by sweeping Maui Prep. They also beat Kaahumanu in three straight sets and took down the Seabury Hall Spartans in four (25-17, 25-18, 24-26, 25-10).

Junior hitter Kalei Adolpho led the way against the Spartans in a loud, packed gym Friday night. Her 16 kills were a game high and she also added five blocks. Fellow juniors Kailani Ritte-Camara and Kawena Puhi also got their year started on the right foot. Puhi, the team’s setter, finished with 43 assists and Ritte-Camara tacked on 10 kills.

“It was really a complete team effort, everyone pulled their weight,” Helm said. Molokai’s coach did say there were still plenty of kinks to work out if the team hopes to keep their unbeaten record in tact much longer. The girls racked up 45 errors against Seabury.

“Right now we are our own biggest competition,” Helm said. “We basically gave up an extra 45 points. On the other hand, I was happy to see them hang tough and still be able to pull out a win with those errors.”

Communication is the biggest obstacle in the early season according to Helm. He said the team still needs to improve their connections between the setter and all of their hitters.

Helm and the team will go back to the drawing board at practice this week to try to sure up some of their mistakes before their home opener against Lanai Friday night. Lanai also opened its season last weekend with a 2-0 record. On Thursday night the Pinelasses swept St. Anthony and followed up by handing Hana High their first loss of the season in four sets the next night.

The Farmers have taken the early lead in the MIL Div. II standings. Lanai and Baldwin are close behind at 2-0 each. Seabury Hall and Hana round out the top half of the league with 3-1 records.

Lanai and the Farmers will meet for a pair of games this weekend at 7 p.m. on Friday and noon on Saturday.

Removing the Beast

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Over 10,000 pounds of gorilla ogo algae pulled from Kaunakakai Wharf

By Dan Murphy

The Division of Aquatic Resources made a visit to Kaunakakai last week as part of an ongoing effort to eradicate invasive algae from Molokai’s reefs. The Alien Invasive Species Unit (AIS), led by Cecile Walsh, removed over 10,000 pounds of gorilla ogo from the wharf area during the week-long project.

Gorilla ogo is an invasive alien species that was first brought to Molokai in the early 1990s. The limu was hidden amongst native species that were brought to the island by a group of non-profit organizations looking to promote aquaculture. The groups distributed the algae to locals and said they would buy back the algae that grew.

“The native species didn’t grow, but the gorilla definitely did,” Walsh said.

The gorilla ogo has continued to spread throughout fish ponds and other rocky surfaces on the west side of the island. Walsh believes the wharf is furthest point west on Molokai that the algae have reached so far. It spreads quickly, and completely covers the shoreline reefs. Walsh said some reefs on Oahu are covered by patches of ogo up to three feet thick.

“The limu is overtaking and smothering the reefs, and it pretty much kills off everything else,” said Pohaku Stone, a Molokai resident who volunteered during the clean-up. Stone said he came down to lend a helping hand to the eight-man crew because it was a good cause.

“It’s better to do something about it than nothing at all,” he said.

Lending a Hand
Walsh said she hoped more local people would help with the clean-up effort in the future. She specifically chose to work at the wharf because of how many people would pass by and ask what they were doing.

Val Bloy was one of many Molokai residents who did stop to learn more about the algae.

“It looks like a huge project, but if it will clean up the wharf it’ll be great,” she said.

Walsh was confident the strong work ethic of Molokai residents would be enough to complete the difficult job.

“I think that the people on Molokai are really dependent on their resources and I think that they will actually do the hard work out there,” she said. “I’ve seen all of the hard work that they have put into restoring some of those fish ponds. If they can do that, they can definitely do this.”

After removing nearly 200 bags of the ogo last week, Walsh and her crew will move west on their next visit. The group, which is made up of seven experts from Maui, Oahu and the Big Island, will return once a month to help clean a different spot. In September they will be at Kaloku’ele and then Oalapu’a in October.

Walsh received a grant last year from The National Fish and Wildlife to pay for the project. She received enough money to pay for an employee on Molokai to keep an eye on things when the AIS team is not around. Walsh said she is narrowing her choice among a couple of groups that have expressed interest.  Whoever takes over will also be in charge of operating the “Manini” algae removal machine.

The Manini is a miniature version of two barges on Oahu that are used to suck algae off of the rocks. It was built to stay here on Molokai and to be used in the fish ponds, according to Eric Burgess, one of the Manini operators.

Gorilla Gardens
The limu is not going to waste. The AIS team distributed what they pulled out of the ocean to local farmers, who have been using gorilla ogo as fertilizer many years.

“It’s really rich in nutrients so when you grow something and all the nutrients are gone, you can replace them with the limu,” said Stone, who will be using the fertilizer in his own garden.

The College of Tropical Agriculture and Resources also received a large batch of the limu to use for experiments. They will be experimenting with how it responds to liquefying and dehydration and then sharing the results with local farmers. 

Still Shining

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Photo by Richard Miller.

By Richard Miller

The Moloka’i Light Station, much better known locally as the Kalaupapa Lighthouse, is one century old.  The light was first lit on September 1, 1909, after a surprisingly short construction time of one year.  Considering the time of history, the location, and the small workforce (fewer than twenty workers), building of the lighthouse was a remarkable feat.

The present lighthouse replaced a small fixed red lens lantern light which had been mounted on a mast.  This lantern rose sixty four feet above the water, and while the visible range was short, installation of the lantern was a major step towards safer navigation between Molokai and Oahu. The focal plane of the Moloka’i Light Station is 213 feet above sea level, and at its best, the Light shone to a visible range of over twenty nautical miles.

The shell of the Lighthouse tower is reinforced concrete.  The concrete tower rises 112 feet above grade.  Thousands of tons of concrete were mixed on site and hauled up onto scaffold and poured into wooden forms.  The walls of the tower are four feet thick at the base and fifteen inches thick at the top.  Designed to house the enormous Fresnel lens and to withstand the pounding of the winds on Molokai’s north shore, the Light is an engineering marvel.  The Fresnel lens alone weighed over three tons, and the apparatus on which the lens rotated weighed tons more. The entire assembly floated in a trough of mercury.   The rotation device was a weight operated system much like a clock mechanism.  A light keeper’s assistant would wind the weight to the top and its descent turned a gearbox which rotated the massive light.

For the first years in service, the Light was fueled with kerosene, but in 1934, two electric generators were installed to provide the power to light the Light electrically.   With the kerosene lamp, the Light’s output was over 600,000 candlepower, while the first electric lamp produced 2,500,000 candlepower, making the Moloka’i Light Station the most powerful in the Hawaiian Islands.  In 1956, an improved lighting system was installed, boosting the output to 12,000,000 candlepower.

From the beginning, the Molokai Light Station was a manned operation, but in August of 1966, the Light was converted to full automation; its rotation no longer would be controlled by the weight operated system.  In 1986, the Fresnel lens was replaced by the Coast Guard and transported to Lahaina, Maui, but was returned to the Kalaupapa Peninsula in 1994.

In 1976, the Molokai Light Station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  The lighthouse in currently owned and protected by the National Park Service.

All facts were derived from The Moloka’i Light Station Historic Resources Report, November, 2001, by William Chapman.

Richard Miller works for the National Park Service in Kalaupapa, specializing in Cultural Resources and Historic Preservation.

Sproat is No Ka Oi

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Molokai Boys represent Island well in MMA fights

By Dan Murphy


Molokai has a new champion.

Sale Sproat claimed the Amateur Middleweight MMA Belt after defeating Oahu’s John Ferrel on Aug. 22 on Maui. It took less than a minute and a half to end the fight with a vicious uppercut to Ferrel’s jaw. Sproat’s big punch sent his opponent to the canvas and the referee stopped the fight.

“He came in, tried to take me down and I just caught him with the uppercut,” Sproat said. The Molokai native, who weighed in at 185 pounds, is now 6-0 in his MMA career.

The new champion was one of three Molokai fighters who stepped into the ring in front of a packed house at Maui’s War Memorial Gymnasium. Keoni Farm and Jake Noble also represented the Friendly Island well.

Farmers bounce back after tough start

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Molokai High goes 2-7 at Ann Kang Invitational
By Dan Murphy

The Molokai High girls’ volleyball team got off to a rocky start last weekend, going 2-7 at the Ann Kang Invitational Tournament on Oahu. The Farmers dropped their first six matches before regrouping and finishing with some success.

“We really beat ourselves,” Molokai head coach Matt Helm said. “We made a lot of errors the first couple days. It was just preseason; it was them learning how to play with each other and getting used to playing against top competition.”

The Ann Kang Invitational featured some of the best teams in the state as well as powerhouse schools from the mainland. The Farmers jumped in head first with matches against Mater Dei School from California and Punahou from Oahu. Punahou ended up going 8-1 and finishing second overall in the tournament.

After two quick losses, Molokai seemed to be turning things around late in the first day against Kaiser High School from Honolulu in their final match of the day. The Farmers were leading late in both games, but could not close out either and fell to 0-3.

“That was just a game where the girls learned they had to finish. We had that game and let it get away,” Helm said.

The team lost three more in the next two days of the tournament before Helm sat everyone down for a meeting.

“I told them in a very stern way that while we want to gain experience, we can play with these teams. We came all the way here to win and they need to stop playing so tentatively,” Helm said.

Afterwards, the girls held a team meeting of their own. Whatever they said, it worked. Later that afternoon, the Farmers cruised to a win over Mid-Pacific and were placed in the bronze bracket.

The Farmers won once more before falling to Maunaloa with scores of 25-14 and 25-18 in the finals of the bronze bracket.

Helm said the team learned a lot during the tournament and now has a better idea of what they need to work on to improve. The team will now have two weeks to make adjustments before the regular season gets started. Helm said they will be ironing out their playbook while continuing to work on individual skills during that time.

“There was a lot of confusion on the court at times, so we need to take care of that,” he said.

The Farmers open up their regular season on Sept. 3 when they travel to Maui for the weekend to take on Maui Prep, Seabury and Ka’ahumanu.

Farmers open season with high hopes

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Girl's Volleyball travels to Ann Kang Tournament on Oahu

By Dan Murphy

The Molokai High School girl’s volleyball team will officially kick off their 2009 season this week at the Ann Kang Invitational Tournament on Oahu.

“It’s a pretty big tournament. We were pretty lucky to get invited,” head coach Matt Helm said. “I’m very optimistic about our chances. I think we can compete with anybody right now.”

The Ann Kang Invite attracts some of the top high school volleyball teams in the country. This year the tournament features 16 teams – four from California and the rest from Hawaii. This is the third time Molokai has been invited to play.

The Farmers will face off against Mater Dei High School from Santa Ana, Cali. and Punahou High School. Punahou went undefeated in the regular season in 2008 and lost in the state championship game.

A Walk to Remember

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Community gathers for cancer awareness.