Girls Soccer Team Brings Home Silver

By Léo Azambuja
A Molokai girls soccer team had some extra weight in their luggage when they returned from a tournament in Hilo, Big Island last month. After clinching a spot in the finals, the team came home with silver medals following a close game against a tough Californian team.
“It was a good, close game. We lost two to zero. The girls played really well,” Molokai Poi Pounders head coach Kathy Puhi said of the finals game against Menifee — a California team — at the Volcano International Soccer Tournament June 20-22.
The Poi Pounders is an AYSO recreational-level soccer team made of 12-to-13-year-old girls. On their way to the finals, they had a four-to-one win, and a two-two draw against the Hilo Wolf Pack. They also played Meniffee twice before the finals, losing a four-to-one game, and drawing a one-one game.
They might have lost the finals game, but still put a good show against the Menifee, a team with more financial resources. While the Poi Pounders, for being an AYSO-affiliated team, has an all-volunteer staff and depends on grants and fundraising, the Menifee is a club team with a paid staff.
“We received a grant from the Maui County Office of Economic Development, and so we use that to fund a majority of our tournaments,” Puhi said. “And then to offset the cost, because it doesn’t cover everything completely, we fundraise.”
The silver medal wasn’t the only achievement the Poi Pounders brought home from the Big Isand; they also walked away with the tournament’s Sportsmanship Award.
And they made new friends as well.
“We did make a connection with the Hilo Wolf Pack. They are hoping to make something happen where they can come here to Molokai and play us again, just for fun,” Puhi said, adding many of the girls on the Hilo team have never been to Molokai. “They said that we were an excellent team with good sportsmanship and good, clean soccer.”
The Hilo tournament was the second in a string of four tournaments scheduled for the Molokai Poi Pounders this season.
“Our first tournament was in March on Oahu. It was called the Kirk Banks Tournament,” Puhi said. “We placed third, but won the Sportsmanship Award again for that one.”
On July 4, the Poi Pounders are going to the Rainbow Tournament on Oahu. Then on July 20, they are going to the national games in Irvine, Calif.
Puhi said the nationals is a big tournament, with about 300 teams from all over the country. In the Poi Pounders’ age division alone, she said, there will be 24 teams competing.
Both tournaments will have good, tough competitions, according to Puhi. There is a different level of play that the Poi Pounders girls only get to see when they go off-island, she said, and that is the reason they participate in these tournaments.
“We get the exposure. We see what soccer looks like everywhere else,” she said.
That is not to say, however, that the Molokai girls don’t have skills. Puhi said they are humble players who sometimes don’t realize how talented they are until they get out on the field. They are on the same level as players from Oahu and the Mainland. It is just that they don’t have the same level of experience those players have, she said.
Puhi and assistant coach Naomi Bicoy train the Poi Pounders three-to-four times a week, 10 months out of the year, in the soccer field behind Kaunakakai School.
The reason they started the program in 2022 was to give more opportunities for the girls to play soccer so that they could be competitive when they start high school, said Puhi, who played soccer her whole life.
“Our travel team has become like a family, and it’s been amazing watching the girls become strong, confident, skilled soccer players who can compete with Neighbor Island and Mainland kids,” she said.
The Poi Pounders is the only travel soccer team on Molokai currently. Puhi hopes that in the future, more volunteers will want to take kids off-island for competitive soccer.
“We’re trying to build soccer players, but we’re also trying to build good humans and trying to teach them about work ethic and teamwork,” Puhi said of her and Bicoy’s work with the girls.
Visit www.ayso985.org for more information and to register kids for under-10 to under-14 years old for the upcoming fall season.