Urasaki sparks Castle to victory over McKinley

Ikaika Urasaki wasn’t having any more heartbreak.

Urasaki caught 11 passes for 99 yards and two touchdowns, then sealed Castle’s 21-7 homecoming win over McKinley with a 59-yard interception return for another score in the fourth quarter on Friday night.

"It’s a big victory for all of us," the two-way player said. "I told my team that we have to finish and keep pushing."

Castle (2-3, 1-2 OIA Red East), playing the last of five straight games on its brand new artificial turf field — and last at home of the season — suffered overtime losses to Kailua and Farrington the past two weeks. With Kahuku looming next week, there was no way Knights coach Nelson Maeda wanted to take on the Red Raiders at 0-3 and on the outside of the playoff picture.

"It’s a great feeling after working so hard and falling on the short end the last couple games," Maeda said. "It puts us back in the pecking order."

Urasaki’s interception return with 3:28 to play couldn’t have come at a better time, with the Tigers (3-2, 2-1) on the march for a potential game-tying score.

"I saw the score, 14-7, and I was just dreaming of the big play. Sudden change to get my team back to victory," the senior Urasaki said.

Starting quarterback Pono Makekau found Urasaki early and often, including for touchdown strikes of 16 and 24 yards to build a 14-point halftime lead.

McKinley was denied its first 4-1 start since 2002.

The Tigers struggled to find a rhythm and were held to just 26 yards of offense in the first half. McKinley’s leading rusher, Gerime Bradley, missed most of the half with an injury (he later returned to finish with 54 yards on the ground) but McKinley coach Joseph Cho wasn’t about to put the loss on that.

"We didn’t come to play, they came to play," Cho said. "Give them all the credit in the world. They smacked us in our mouth and we didn’t react."

McKinley compounded matters when it fumbled away the opening kickoff of the second half, but the Tigers negated it when they made a big goal-line stand to keep the deficit at two scores.

Two series later, McKinley’s Mathias Tuitele-Iafeta recovered a Castle fumble on a pitch at the Knights’ 27. Tuitele-Iafeta bulled his way to a 7-yard touchdown soon thereafter to cut it to a one-score game until Urasaki’s heroics.

Makekau and relief quarterback Stephen Lee combined to complete 70 percent of their passes in Castle’s spread offense.