Hawaii Prep track and field coach Pat Lau and his assistants spent the past few months dissecting the HHSAA track and field championships down to every last hurdle, jump, vault and baton pass. So it was no surprise to them that Ka Makani’s first state title in 21 years came down to Saturday’s final race, the 1,600 relay.
Hawaii Prep track and field coach Pat Lau and his assistants spent the past few months dissecting the HHSAA track and field championships down to every last hurdle, jump, vault and baton pass. So it was no surprise to them that Ka Makani’s first state title in 21 years came down to Saturday’s final race, the 1,600 relay.
“I told the girls they couldn’t rely on anyone but themselves,” Lau said.
Considering who was running the first leg of the relay, the incomparable Emma Taylor, that wasn’t an issue.
“I still can’t believe her,” Lau said of the now seven-time state hurdling champion. “This week she was a leader. We had some decisions to make in the (1,600), and (Emma) helped make them.”
As it turned out, a fifth-place finish at Kamehameha-Kapalama in Honolulu would have meant a tie with Kaiser and sixth would have meant runner-up. Taylor, freshmen Emi Higgins and Zoe Ganley, and senior Savannah Cochran came in fourth, producing a two-point victory over defending state champion Kaiser that would have made former coach Stan Shutes proud, both because of its planning and execution.
A longtime coach at HPA, Shutes led the school to its first state title in any sport, cross-country in 1983, and its only track and field title before Saturday in 1995. He died in 2011.
“I remember sitting down with him about a month or so before he passed,” Lau said. “He used to talk about championships and how he won.”
Lau, obviously, was listening.
“We had been plotting this state championship since the beginning of the season,” he said. “We had it all set up in our war room.”
Lau figured it would take 55 points to win, and he was close. HPA edged Kaiser 57-55, getting 28 individually from Taylor, and she also was part of two fourth-place relay finishes, worth four points apiece.
Taylor’s two hurdling victories were a foregone conclusion, plus she added silver in the 200, her first state medal in a nonhurdling event.
Kaui Taylor, a senior, gave HPA 10 points on Friday by repeating in the high jump, she finished sixth in the long jump (one point), and she ran in the 400 relay along with Sofia Aguilar, Rowan Kotner and Emma Taylor.
Cochran came through with silver in the 800, and Kotner gave HPA a fifth-place finish in the pole vault it couldn’t have won without.
“We celebrated and I took the team out and had a great dinner, but after that I came back to talk to the coaches about next year,” Lau said.
Not only is Emma Taylor irreplaceable, but Lau isn’t sure who is going to try.
“We don’t have any hurdlers or high jumpers,” Lau said. “We were laughing. It feels like the next season has already begun.”
It will be different, however. Instead of chasing, Ka Makani will be defending.