Campbell started slow and finished fast to retain the coveted Sledgehammah trophy with a convincing 38-19 victory over leeward-side football rival Kapolei on Saturday.
The Sabers (5-2, 3-2 OIA Open) trailed 6-3 and had trouble getting their offense on point in the early going. But when their mojo finally showed up, it never disappeared.
With the win, Campbell took over sole possession of third place in the league, passing the Hurricanes (5-2, 2-2), who have now lost two in a row after five straight wins to open the season.
“We still have a lot of room for improvement,” said Sabers receiver Tana Togafau-Tavui, who lit it up with seven catches for 170 yards, including an 81-yard TD. “I’m not happy with the score. It should have been a donut (shutout), but it’s all good.”
Fellow receiver Mason Muaau also came up huge on the other end of Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele passes. At 6-foot-6, he’s an imposing figure, especially on high red-zone passes.
On Saturday, he caught TD passes of 10 and 9 yards from Sagapolutele. The second one was a one-handed catch of a bullet while being blanketed by two defenders in the end zone that gave Campbell a 24-6 halftime lead.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘It’s fourth down and we need this touchdown,’ ” Muaau said. “And I just put my hand out and gripped the thing like it was the last thing I had and just brought it in. Winning the Sledgehammah and keeping it is a good thing for the school.”
Down but not out yet, Kapolei looked ready to make a game of it in the second half, and the Hurricanes did cut the gap to 24-13 on quarterback Liatama Amisone’s 6-yard TD run, but it was pretty much the Sabers the rest of the way.
Amisone, a dual-threat guy, was pressured all night by the Campbell front seven, and that took the Hurricanes out of their usual rhythm. Blesyng Alualu-Tuiolemotu, Kameaehu Kopa-Kaawalauole, Tysic Puni, Matthew Pyne and Ieremia Lemaota were just a few responsible for that intense pressure.
“We did a good job containing the quarterback, and he’s pretty good,” Sabers coach Darren Johnson said. “The D-line did a good job rushing the outside shoulder. Once in a while we got caught, but for the most part we did a good job.”
For Campbell, Sagapolutele wound up throwing for 289 yards and four TDs.
“It took a bit to get rolling, but we just gotta keep getting better,” Johnson added. “The stretch is coming where we’re going to see what kind of team we are, what kind of character we have and all of that. That was a big one. We get to keep the ‘hammah’ at home.”
Hurricanes linebacker Vaimetua Kamakele, who had a sack, was taken to the hospital in an ambulance with a bit more than five minutes left, reportedly as a precaution for head and neck injury.
“They (the Sabers) are a good team, we are a good team,” said Kapolei receiver Diezel Kamoku, who scored the first of two Hurricanes TDs on a 9-yard first quarter pass from Amisone. “But sometimes we lack on getting locked in and get delay of game penalties and that really hit us tonight. In all aspects of the game, once it all comes together we’ll be a really good team. I feel like we can get a another shot at them in the playoffs.”
