Four senior athletes from Waiakea High School — Noah Tyrin, Micah Lopes, Maya Kaneshiro and Journey Morimoto — held an event on Monday to sign letters of intent to join college athletic programs.
Kaneshiro and Tyrin are bound for the Pacific Northwest, while Lopes and Morimoto will land in southwestern states.
Tyrin — an offensive tackle and multi-year captain on the Warriors’ football team, who is also an accomplished thrower — will continue being a multi-sport athlete as he joins Pacific University’s football and Track and Field squads.
He will be in familiar company at Pacific, which is a popular destination for BIIF athletes — specifically football players. The Boxers’ 2023 roster sported seven former BIIF players and a whopping 32 players from other parts of the state of Hawaii.
Kaneshiro will also head to Pacific to join the Boxers’ Track and Field program. Kaneshiro consistently placed among the BIIF’s top rankings in jumping events this spring, placing No. 4 in both the triple jump and the long jump at the BIIF finals earlier this month.
Pacific is a NCAA Division III Northwest Conference (NWC) member. Other NWC schools such as Linfield, George Fox and Pacific Lutheran are also hotspots for Hawaii athletes.
Morimoto will play soccer for Park University in Gilbert, Ariz. — a NAIA Division I California Pacific Conference member school. The goalkeeper was a perrenial force on the Warriors’ soccer team, helping lead WHS to multiple BIIF titles and finals appearances. She also posted nine shutouts during the 2023-24 season.
The Pirates share the CPC with rivals such as Embry-Riddle Aeronautical, UC Merced and La Sierra.
Lopes, another lineman from the WHS football team, will play for the Ogden Jets — a new, independent, JuCo-level football team based in Ogden, Utah. Programs like that of the Jets have sprung up across the Southwest within the past year as many Utah and Arizona junior college football programs have shut down.
The Jets are partnered with instituions, such as Coral Sands Academy, that allow their players to further their collegiate careers while playing.