By Wes Nakama

In an already wild and crazy ILH baseball season, Kamehameha has been the steady hand. And on Thursday afternoon, senior right-hander Elai Iwanaga had the steady arm — allowing just three hits in six shutout innings while striking out seven and walking none to help the visiting Warriors blank Mid-Pacific, 4-0.

Kamehameha improved to 4-0, in sole possession of first place in the league’s Division I standings. ‘Iolani, Pac-Five and Saint Louis are two games back in a three-way tie for second at 2-2. MPI fell to 1-3 after its third straight defeat.

“We just try to stay in the moment, play the game the right way as best as we can — meaning throwing strikes, playing defense and executing whenever we can to score as many as we can,” Warriors coach Daryl Kitagawa said. “It was tough today, but we got four (runs), which was good enough. We’re grateful to be in the position we are in. But we obviously know there’s a long, long road ahead as well.”

Wins don’t come easy for visitors at iconic Damon Field, and this one was no exception. Kamehameha loaded the bases with one out in the top of the first inning, only to come up empty after reliever Brady Terayama got a strikeout and flyout to center field to escape the jam.

But the Warriors got two runs in the top of the second on Taj Uyehara’s two-run double into the right-center field gap, then added single runs in the fifth and sixth innings on Dillon Andres’ RBI double into right-center and Logan Akaka’s sacrifice fly to deep center, respectively.

It ended up being essentially a bullpen game for Owls coach Dunn Muramaru, who used five different pitchers, only to see them allow seven hits and four walks, in addition to one hit-by-pitch.

“They work hard, we’re just so inexperienced,” Muramaru said of this year’s roster. “Our guys were scared to throw strikes. It’s hard, you cannot defend walks.”

Uyehara went 4-for-4 with the double and two RBI’s, and Andres went 2 for 3 with the run-scoring double.

In the meantime, Iwanaga motored through the innings without much threat, allowing only one runner past second base and only one other into scoring position. That was in the first inning, when Ezekiel Asato slammed a two-out double, which Iwanaga followed with a strikeout looking. And in the sixth, when Brayden Shizuru led off with an infield single, stole second and advanced to third on a groundout, only to be stranded after a strikeout and grounder to first.

“It’s a good lineup, the game plan is always to just go after them,” said Iwanaga, who has signed a scholarship agreement with UCLA. “These guys put the ball in play a lot, they’ll bunt, they’ll swing, they’ll battle. So I was throwing a lot of early change-ups, just to get them off their feet, and get weak contact and put the ball in play. If you’re in the (strike) zone, you’re always going to have success. It was finding the spots, trying to get ahead early, and then that two-strike, swing-and-miss pitch — just gotta execute it.”

Muramaru said Iwanaga was especially effective after giving up each of the three hits.

“He was tough,” Muramaru said. “I know he was throwing breaking balls with runners in scoring position, but we couldn’t hit him, so it didn’t matter.”

Iwanaga was also backed by an error-free defense that made several clutch plays, and was relieved by closer Logan Sanchez, who set down the Owls in order with a strikeout and two flyouts in the seventh.

“We know they’re going to put the ball in play, we know they’re not going to swing at bad pitches,” Kitagawa said. “So we’re going to attack the zone, and when they hit it to us, hopefully we make all the plays. And today we did. That’s what we want, we want action, we want to throw strikes and make them beat us, instead of us beating ourselves.”

The rest of the ILH has been beating each other, including Damien, the lone Division II team which is 4-0 including victories over ‘Iolani, Punahou, Mid-Pacific and Maryknoll. Pac-Five has already notched wins over Saint Louis and Maryknoll.

“We’re early in the season, so we’ll just keep plugging away,” Kitagawa said. “We’ll keep working hard and keep supporting each other.”

Photos: @carterai_visuals