Marauders On Familiar Turf Going Into State Tournament

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The by-product of playing a lot of games is that opponents and potential opponents can become as familiar with your team as you are.

While teams are all too familiar with Waipahu’s ace Drake Yoshioka, they are far less aware of junior Jerry Tanupo,who is likely to get the call to start Friday’s state baseball tournament game.

“They haven’t seen him too often,“coach Milton Takenaka said of opponents for this week.

Tanupo was on academic probation until only recently and hadn’t pitched in any games until Waipahu’s 3-2 loss to Radford in the championship game of the OIA post-season tournament recently. But he displayed his skill daily in practice in waiting to be returned to good academic standing.

“He’s made a big turnaround,” Takenaka said. “It’s a big lift for everybody. He’s been itching to go all year.He’s a competitor. It was a matter of getting him into a game situation.”

The Division II state tournament begins Thursday with quarterfinal games. Waipahu was to learn of its seeding and first-day opponent late Sunday. Regardless of the opponent, the Marauders will go with Yoshioka on Thursday as expected. Takenaka was unsure who would pitch Saturday, as neither Tanupo nor Yoshioka would be rested enough to make it a go, although the coach did mention the latter could be available for one inning of relief work.

“Pitching-wise, we should be all right,” said Takenaka, whose team is 10-3 overall. “Drake has gotten better as far as his control, and he’s thrown a lot. Tanupo hasn’t thrown much, so his arm should be rested.”

At one point during Waipahu’s OIA finale with Radford, Tanupo struck out four of five batters in a sequence, including all three foes in the third inning.

How well the pitching staff holds up this week should go a long way in determining their post-season fate. There is no first-round bye for the Marauders this year as in 2009 and 2008, seasons when the DII state tournament field hosted 12 instead of eight as it does today.

“Everybody is in the same boat,” Takenaka said of playing three games in three days. “You have to throw your best pitcher when you have him.”

A week off to rest helped the entire team, including the coach. The Marauders took last Monday and Tuesday off before reconvening Wednesday for practice. That still left them with a full week to prepare for Thursday’s game.

“We wanted to break up the monotony. We didn’t know who we were going to be playing either, so we thought they could have some time to relax.”

Twelve days will have elapsed between Waipahu’s loss to Radford in the OIA DII final April 24 and Thursday’s state tournament opener. Among the questions they hope to answer during that time is whether they can eliminate self-imposed mis-cues.

“We’ll have to work on our defense - throwing the ball where it is supposed to be thrown, hitting cut-offs, that sort of thing,“Takenaka said. “Defensively, we’ve played halfway decent, but we’re still making mistakes. Even in the championship game, we had some missed signals and didn’t execute, defensively - things that have kind of bothered us the last few weeks.

“Offensively, we’ve not really been hitting the ball and helping the pitcher out by going after bad pitches,” he added.“In the last two weeks, we faced better pitching, but we’ll have to be more selective at the plate.”

Waipahu is making its third straight state tournament appearance. The Marauders went 1-2 in tournament games last year,including a riveting one-run loss to eventual state champion Maryknoll in the quarterfinals.