‘Ewa Bound
The Northwest champions are from ‘Ewa Beach, Hawai‘i this year. They defeated Council Rock-Newtown from Pennsylvania 7-1 yesterday and face Midwest champs Davenport Northwest from Iowa on Sunday, August 21st. ‘Ewa Beach has been absolutely demolishing the competition, outscoring them 87-19 in the qualifying rounds. The team from my hometown Kihei didn’t even face these juggernauts from ‘Ewa, but got beat by Hilo and Pearl City (those townies). That’s all forgotten now; I’ll cheer for the team from Hawai‘i as well as any teams from the New England area. Imua! (Go!)
A note on the title of this post: When you give driving directions in Hawai‘i, if you were born and raised there you wouldn’t typically use north, south, east, or west but “mauka” (towards the mountains) and “makai” (towards the ocean). Since there is a prevailing wind pattern from the northeast, the land on the side of a mountain range that faces the tradewinds is called “windward” and its opposite is “leeward.” These terms are habitually used to refer to sides of the island, not directions. Honolulu is on the leeward side of the island and south of the Ko‘olau Mountains, so mauka is north and makai is south. In the Honolulu area, you would use “Diamond Head” as a way to say eastwards and “‘Ewa” to mean west. Traffic going “‘Ewa bound” on H-1 (yes, Hawai‘i has interstates) in the afternoon is atrocious, sort of like 93 North after work in the Boston area. In fact, city and county planners are trying to make the towns around ‘Ewa into a “second city” and built a satellite city hall in Kapolei to that end.
