Saint Louis junior Hunter Berger turned the ILH finals into his personal highlight reel yesterday, locking up the 138-pound championship while Kamehameha walked out with both the boys and girls team titles. Berger’s win, his fourth Interscholastic League of Honolulu crown at a fourth different weight class, capped a long day of technical falls, pins and repeat champs at Kamehameha’s Kapalama gym and now shifts the spotlight to the Texaco state tournament in two weeks.
Berger handled Kamehameha’s Kona Lunn by technical fall in the 138-pound final, completing a title run that has taken him through 106, 126, 132 and now 138. The victory also marked the 100th of his career and put him in rare company as just the seventh Saint Louis wrestler to pull off an ILH slam, a short list of Crusader standouts who have swept the league across four seasons, as reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
State Title Chase Looms
The ILH finals ran yesterday at Kamehameha and are logged on the season’s competition pages and brackets. FloWrestling lists the boys ILH event yesterday, and the Hawaii High School Athletic Association has the Texaco Wrestling State Championships set for Friday and Saturday two weeks from now at Neal S. Blaisdell Arena. That tight window gives contenders only a brief stretch to fine-tune weight management and match strategy before stepping onto the state stage.
Kamehameha Dominates the Team Races
Kamehameha made the most of its home floor and stacked points in nearly every corner of the brackets. The Warrior girls rolled up 190 points to comfortably outdistance Punahou’s 109, and the Kamehameha boys clinched the team title by 17.5 points with Saint Louis settling into third. A mix of repeat medalists and first-time league champions helped stretch the margins and lock down both trophies. Per the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Kamehameha has produced at least one ILH titleist every season since wrestling gained state-sanctioned status.
Standouts and First-Time Champions
New faces on top of the podium included first-time ILH champions Makiah Iraha (113), Cole Kusumoto (120), Saxon Bristol (126), Maverick Sanchez (150) and Micah Dunn (165). Returning winners kept their streaks alive too, with Braven Moore (106) and Gavin Buelow (175) repeating as champs. Other standout finals featured Bella Yamamoto taking the 110-pound title for ’Iolani and Dylan Buelow grabbing the 144-pound crown. Several finals ended quickly by pin or technical fall, a reminder of how fast a bracket can flip at league championships.
With the Texaco state tournament now just two weeks out, coaches and wrestlers will spend the coming days sharpening conditioning and late-match execution. Berger and the rest of the ILH’s top finishers leave Kapalama with momentum and an eye on turning league hardware into state medals at Neal S. Blaisdell Arena.
