Corpuz, Makaiwi Win Titles

Molokai produced a first-time champion and a repeating champion at last Saturday’s wrestling meet. After coming in second two weeks ago, Desiree Corpuz won the girls’ 117-pound class for her first title of the season, while Saydee Makaiwi took the 127-pound weight class for her third title this season.

Second-place finishers for Molokai included Jarron Boswell (160 B) and Kui Han (285) for the boys, and Kailaoe Cabanting (117), Cendall Manley (145) and Jasmyn Davis-Namuu (168) for the girls. Manley finished behind Lahainaluna’s Carly Jaramillo, the reigning state champion in the 140-pound weight class.

Lahainaluna again dominated the field with nine boys’ champions and six girls. The meet also included visiting teams from Canada’s Walter Murray Collegiate Institute, which brought over a few national and international wrestling champions.

“I’ve got a hunch that February is a good month to get out of Canada and come to Hawaii,” said Head Coach Randy Manley. “It was good for our team to have some fresh faces to compete with.”

Molokai’s Alexandria Simon (138) and Martika English (184) came in third in weight classes that included Canadian wrestlers Kaylan Muir (138) and Georgina Nelthorpe (184), both of whom were juvenile national gold medalists.

It was Molokai’s fourth and final meet before the MIL championships. The junior varsity MILs will take place this Saturday, Feb. 21, while Molokai will attend the varsity championships the following week.

According to Han, wrestlers must place within the top two in their weight categories at MILs in order to qualify for the state championships. Performance during the regular season and MILs can determine the way a wrestler is seeded at states.

“The better seed placing you have the easier your matches will be,” said Han. “Those with bad seed placing will usually have the hardest matches. All in all, you just wrestle hard and hope you make it.”