THE Hawaii prep sports season came to a dramatic end last weekend. Learning how to take
a loss also importantPunahou's girls' basketball team repeated as state champion by pulling off a shocker against the state's absolute favorite this year, Kalaheo, on Friday night at the Stan Sheriff Center.
Iolani, despite losing several all-star starters and fielding a very young team (75 percent of players were underclassmen), three-peated as baseball champion on Saturday night at Aloha Stadium.
With these unexpected outcomes, the Interscholastic League of Honolulu ran its count of Hawaii High School Athletic Association titles for 1997-98 to 14.
The league also won the Oahu Prep Bowl (football) for the 13th straight year last November.
Punahou was the big team winner in the HHSAA with eight titles.
By contrast, the Oahu Interscholastic Association won four state titles (boys' and girls bowling, girls' tennis, girls' wrestling).
If any team had a chance to win one for the blue-collar OIA this year, it was the Lady Mustangs. They were magnificent to watch during their 27-game winning streak, systematically taking apart everyone they faced.
But they lost the big one.
In fact, public schools didn't fare well in even getting to the big one this time around.
Now, everyone who thinks this is really important, raise your hand.
I never liked the adage about winning being everything, and I like even less the coaches who subscribe to it.
I'm talking about the ones who refuse to talk to their players or the media after a title game loss.
I'M glad I didn't have to encounter that when Kalaheo lost on Friday night. But I've seen it happen over the years and it annoys me. It shouldn't be a part of the high school sports atmosphere.
Without a doubt, Chico Furtado and the young women he coached were stunned and deeply saddened by the way Punahou thoroughly dissected their game plan. Few teams come into a final burdened with the heavy expectations Kalaheo carried.
But, hey, anything can happen in postseason, and Punahou put it together brilliantly Friday night.
I'm glad I was able to see Furtado pat and hug his sobbing athletes after the final buzzer because if a team ever needed that treatment from its head coach, it was the Lady Mustangs.
Furtado wasn't happy, but he didn't take out his personal disappointment on the kids who sweated, sacrificed, suffered and jumped to his verbal whip all season.
I've been to wakes livelier than some of the locker rooms I've visited after championship losses.
WHAT really bothers me is that these are often teams I know have accomplished a lot in the months preceding the championship loss.
I won't waste any more time on coaches who tell me there's nothing worth saying about their players after a loss.
If a coach makes any effort to avoid talking after a loss, I'll let him go. If he wants to walk out of the arena or the stadium like he's got a busload of seven-figure-salaried athletes waiting for him, I won't help him live his lie.
These are high school kids who deserve more compassion than that from their coaches, and I dread seeing behavior like this next school year.
I don't think any parent who pays to educate his kids -- through taxes or through private tuition -- should put up with this kind of coaching.
Any coach worth his salt knows that teaching a kid how to accept defeat is even more important than teaching him how to deal with victory.
That's because you're going to lose a lot more than you win in this life.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.