Going into the afternoon and evening the Moanalua soccer field hosted 3 inducing games all hosting the visiting team, Kalani High School.

The Kalani Falcons who had advanced to the state Semifinals last season were planning to continue an unbeaten streak, coming into the match as  3rd ranked in the OIA.

The evening brought high hopes to finally end the 4-year curse as Moanalua failed to come victorious n previous matchups. Entering their match ranked 5th.

The Nā Menehune suffered an early goal in the 6th minute of the first half. Where they began to shuffle in Kalani continued to capitalize on their domination in the box when taking a corner. The Menehunes back line couldn’t gain any traction in the first half, struggling to drop back fast enough in time for Kalani’s quick counters. 

These breakaways slowly led Moanalua to trail 0-3 early in the 2nd half. With Kalani dominating the right corner flag, Moanalua tried to answer but were pinned on having to constantly mark the floods of players entering the box. Eventually causing a double hat-trick to be conceded.

With winger Micheal Akahane suffering an early 2nd calf injury the blue and white supporters quickly fell into a silent trance. While many fans were dropped to the bleachers. The Moanalua midfield were their standout performers, opening up the field and adding two more chances before halftime. Quickly bringing back the cheers and claps of the crowd from their coordinated passes into the Kalani box.

 Midfielder Giovanni Venegas says, “Most definitely the chemistry is really great this year. Most of us got to bond over the summer because of summer league so the team feels like a second family since we all know each other pretty well.”

The emphatic 0-7 loss puts Moanalua into 1-0-3 the OIA season where they will face Castle on Saturday. Where goalkeeper Nico Williams believes that the team is more than ready to fight this season when asked how prepared the team is to bounce back. “We should be confident, we’ve already faced one of our biggest challenges so as long as we don’t lose our motivation we should be fine.”