Even if it is just a magical moment in the tennis cycle of life, the 16 age division in Hawaii is pretty special.

Twenty years after Jean Okada, Cherie Kaneshiro, Tracee Lee and Kathy Peterson dominated local girls tennis like no age group before, more than 20 boys and girls are launching winners at a remarkable rate. All will be 15 or 16 by the end of the month. There are 24 Hawaii juniors ranked among the Top 500 nationally in 16s.

“We have a competitive group pushing each other,” says Riki Fujitani, chair of the USTA/Hawaii Pacific Section’s junior committee and father of McKenna, No. 131 in Boys 14s. “The level overall is much, much higher.”

They could have taken a group picture at last month’s state high school championship. Sophomore Alyssa Tobita won her second state title, underclassmen Kawika Lam and Zander Kim, and Ashley Ishimura and Katie Kim swept doubles, and a bunch of their age-group buddies reached the late rounds.

Most are at the Patsy T. Mink CORP Tennis Complex this weekend for the Summer Junior Section Championships, the largest local junior event of the year. This group of players might be at the park together even if they didn’t play tennis.

“They push each other. They are all good kids. They fight hard on the court and are good friends off the court,” says Mimi Kennell, the section’s director of junior tennis. “It’s the best group of kids you could have. Some top players just see each other at tournaments but don’t socialize. This group, for me it’s the first time I’ve seen a group really work hard, push each other and still cheer for each other — all the good things you want to see.”

Since the devastation of last year’s earthquake in Japan, some have taken their ohana attitude even further. Punahou’s Issei Funatsu was born in northern Japan and moved here at age 5. His grandparents were from Iwate Prefecture, where the “tsunami destroyed everything.”

At his father’s urging, Funatsu went to Iwate last August to volunteer for disaster relief.

“I wasn’t too sure what to expect,” Funatsu recalled. “But after I went I really liked it. It was a lot of fun helping out. It also felt great knowing I was doing something, helping change some peoples’ lives. It made me want to go back more and more.”

He started an “Encourage Japan!” blog with a donation link and returned last winter.

“A lot more was cleaned up,” Funatsu said, “but right by the ocean everything is just empty and nothing is standing.”

He and his tennis friends raised $1,000 at a Rally for Japan tennis fundraiser on the disaster’s first anniversary in March. Funatsu has now collected $3,300, which he gives directly to the Iwate Prefectural Government. It is earmarked for the Iwate Learning Hope Fund to help tsunami orphans. This summer he is going back again and three teammates (Dylan Shen, Kim and Jacob Blaisdell) will join him.

Most of the girls in this group will probably play at a Division I college. Kurtistown’s Sarah Dvorak is ranked 97th in Girls 18s nationally, and Tobita is No. 147. Zandrix Acob, also from Hawaii island, is playing at a USTA academy in Florida.

But, as Funatsu proves, tennis is not all they are about.

“This is not a one-time thing,” Funatsu says of his work. “You can’t just donate funds and forget about it. We’ve got to keep donating because all these kids don’t have parents and they need all the help they can get.”