Saint Louis state champion Corey Cabanban will lead the boys field at 126 pounds in the ILH championships on Thursday at Kamehameha.
The Crusader is the top seed in his weight class and is the only boy going for the league slam. He won at 108 as a freshman, 113 as a sophomore and 120 as a junior. He followed each of those efforts with state titles.
He will become the first grand slam winner from Saint Louis since Brandon Low in 2006 with a win.
‘Iolani’s Kaysen Takenaka will go for his third ILH title as the top seed at 172 pounds. He won at 138 pounds in 2016 and 170 pounds last year. Teammate Jake Angelo will go for a repeat as the second seed behind Makana Tapia of Kamehameha at 154 pounds and fellow Raider Kaua Nishigaya will be trying to reclaim the league championship he won two years ago. Nishigaya will have to go through top seed Ansen Ursua of Saint Louis to get it.
The biggest scrap could come at 222 pounds, where defending champion Brock Ai of Kamehameha is the top seed but seeded third behind 2016 champion Dominic Tominiko of Saint Louis and top seed Legend Matautia of Punahou.
Here are the brackets: Boys Varsity -Corrected
ILH has 3spots for states but most brackets have only 3 some a few more or LESS!
With all due respect to all of these wrestlers who work hard, these “championship” brackets show how unpopular this sport has become. There are zero qualifying matches. Count em … zero!
Most of the good wrestlers are seeded into semis and some are straight into the final. This is through no fault of their own, but it is a huge statement about where the sport is at here in Hawaii.
Back in the day, ALL of the wrestlers had win four or five matches at ILH Champs just to get to the final. Again, all respect to the 3 and 4 time champs, but it is nothing like it was back in the day.