Hawaii

Kealakehe H.S. engineering team Hawaii’s lone entrant in NASA competition – West Hawaii Today

Published

1 year ago

December 11, 2024

Kealakehe H.S. engineering team Hawaii’s lone entrant in NASA competition – West Hawaii Today

So many high schoolers are contemplating their futures, but for those on Kealakehe High School’s student engineering team, the future is now.

They will be the only team representing Hawaii among 75 global teams in NASA’s prestigious Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC), in April 2025 in Huntsville, Ala. Those teams hail from 20 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and 16 countries — including 38 high schools, 35 colleges and universities, and two middle schools.

The competition challenges students to design and build human-powered rovers capable of navigating simulated extraterrestrial terrains. The design and build process requires all the STEM disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“This HERC is an interesting competition just because it’s so college-based,” said the team’s advisor, Justin Brown, a math teacher and the school’s Career Technical Education coordinator. “And that’s where we’re really finding the big opportunities for the kids. And now that we have the nicest shop in the state, we’re extremely fortunate. It’s like, ‘Hey, let’s go build some real stuff.’

“And so, it’s been a really good push for us to apply all those skills to some really high-level engineering and design work.”

Brown, who was named Hawaii Teacher of the Year in 2021 by the national nonprofit Association for Career Technical Education, has been successful writing grants and forging external partnerships that allow his students to rub elbows with professional mentors in the aerospace, robotics and engineering fields, and to build their models in an environment akin to what they might find in an industrial setting.

“We’ve been very fortunate,” Brown said. “We win a ton of national and international awards every single year. Our kids graduate with an associate’s degree. We’re articulated with college engineering in high school.

“We’ve just added about $5 million in state-of-the-art equipment, and have been looking at what does that mean in terms of our engineering prep program.”

HERC aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards, which are used in Hawaii public schools.

Teams earn points by successful completion of design reviews, designing and assembling a rover that meets all challenge criteria and successful completion of course obstacles and/or mission tasks. The team with the highest number of points accumulated throughout the project year will be the winner in their respective division.

Students must do 100% of the work, which includes the design, construction of the vehicle and task components — including work that is supported by a professional machinist for the purpose of training or safety — written reports, presentations and preparations for the competition. Through these tasks, students gain a deeper understanding of concepts and content and enhance their communication, collaboration, inquiry, problem-solving and flexibility skills.

“We had to present to a panel of NASA engineers and kind of, like, defend the decisions we had made,” Brown said. “And this has been a real journey for the kids. We had to turn in a 30-page write-up. It was a beast for the kids. We had to present the Monday before Thanksgiving. And the only time they could put us in was 5 a.m. our time. And we had to do the review before we start building.

“We get to do a lot of iterations, and we’ll have another big presentation for them in February.”

After the design review presentations with NASA, Kealakehe’s students will build a prototype for testing prior to competition.

Brown said that 42 students are currently working on the rover, although by April, perhaps 20 or so will make the trek to Alabama. As the fabrication lead on the project, junior Zach Smith will likely be one attending the NASA competition.

“I think the unique aspect of HERC is that it allows students to get an earlier introduction to the aspects of what NASA’s doing as far as the early stages of the lunar rover, or even how to design for the potential usage of certain components of the Mars rover when we hopefully get there,” Smith said.

Smith taken a giant leap toward his college education via distance-learning classes through the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York. He said he’s “found an interest, specifically in mechanical engineering or applied physics.”

“I’ve had a long interest in robotics, itself, ever since elementary school,” Smith said. “When Kealakehe High School started initiatives to implement robotics to the lower levels of education, I found an interest then. And when I came into high school, I started pursuing STEM as well as robotics as a freshman.”

Brown said the work being done on the lunar rover is a continuation of work done on the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

“All the training and the testing that those astronauts did, that happened on Maunakea and Mauna Loa,” he said. “Our kids are curious and inventive. They have all the right stuff to be the future leaders in this new aerospace industry that’s coming up. And HERC is just a great combination of all that, because they’re building cool stuff. It connects to some very real things that we want the kids to consider, like who’s space for? Who gets to make the decisions? Why aren’t students like our students in those rooms? And what do we need to do to make sure they are in the future?

“There’s a whole new generation who’s getting to fall in love with space exploration. But this competition harkens back to the kind of missions that were going on then. Because of the cool new toys, things that used to be done with the world’s best professional engineers can now be done with high school kids.”

Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

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Hawaii

Hawaii suffers first defeat of the season against Loyola Chicago | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Published

10 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Hawaii suffers first defeat of the season against Loyola Chicago | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

The second-ranked Hawaii men’s volleyball team expected a different Loyola Chicago team to show up Friday night in the rematch of Thursday’s 94-minute sweep by UH.

They were certainly correct in that assessment.

Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said flatly the Ramblers were better after No. 7 Loyola Chicago handed Hawaii its first home loss in January in two years in a 25-23, 25-22, 24-26, 29-27 win before a season-high crowd of 5,811 at Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.

Aleksandar Sosa put down a match-high 19 kills and setter Ryan McElligott set the tone with four of his five aces in the first set for Loyola Chicago (1-1), which out-served and out-blocked the Rainbow Warriors.

“I thought they touched a lot of balls on the block and those first two sets, the first set, we had three or four balls back on our side to score some points and we didn’t,” Wade said. “We kind of screwed it up. We weren’t quite as crisp and efficient and against a good team, we let them hang around and they come back and make some plays late.”

Hawaii looked done for the night trailing 20-13 when it mounted a furious comeback in the third set to avoid a sweep.

Loyola Chicago had five match points in the fourth set and finally put the contest away with a double block of Ofeck Hazan to complete the upset.

“I think they served way better and we really struggled passing their serve,” said Hazan, who started in place of Trevell Jordan in the middle. “They were more creative out of system. (Thursday) they just hit into our block and today they just found the touches or just played better.”

Louis Sakanoko led Hawaii with 18 kills and set a career high with 12 digs, and Kristian Titriyski added 16 kills before sitting out the fourth set. UH hit .254 for the match and had six aces to the Ramblers’ eight. Loyola Chicago hd 15.5 blocks to Hawaii’s 10.5.

“We weren’t clicking on all cylinders and I’m not trying to use this as an excuse, but (setter) Tread (Rosenthal) didn’t practice all week. He had a back that tightened up,” Wade said. “Trevell’s back tightened up and I thought Ofeck played pretty well and he gave us a nice spark, but you’re just a little off rhythm there. Kristian was kind of grabbing his back late and obviously we made the decision to go with Kainoa (Wade) to give us a spark and he gave us that.”

Kainoa Wade and Sakanoko each served three straight points for UH in the third set after it fell behind 20-13 and Finn Kearney came off the bench to serve the final two points that ended in blocks to get UH back in the game.

Hawaii hit just .171 in the fourth and made eight service errors. It had 20 serving errors for the match and served in at less than 80%.

“Obviously it’s a work in progress. We’re in game four of the year,” Kainoa Wade said. “We got a lot of work to do, but we’ve got to trust what we know. We’ve served a lot of balls in our lives, all of us, so we know we can go on runs and make plays.”

The Ramblers gave Hawaii a taste of its own medicine in the opening set with McElligott building a strong poker hand of aces during an 8-0 run during which Charlie Wade used both timeouts.

McElligott had three aces after Jake Read’s kill put him behind the service line, and despite two Hawaii timeouts and the media timeout, he poured it on until UH caught a break with a Loyola Chicago net violation on an overpass that almost certainly would have been a Ramblers point.

Sakanoko followed with back-to-back kills, including a deep tip into the far corner over a triple block that prompted Loyola Chicago to call timeout leading 17-14.

Hawaii extended the run to 5-0 after Titriyski put down a kill following a long rally to pull UH within a point.

The Rainbow Warriors got back to even at 22-all on Kainoa Wade’s ace as a serving sub. The set was tied once more until a Rosenthal service error and a McElligott ace for his fourth of the set handed UH its first set loss of the season.

Rosenthal wasn’t able to spin serve all night due to the back injury.

Neither team separated by more than a point in the second set until Justin Todd had two aces during a 4-0 UH run to put the ‘Bows ahead 13-10.

Hawaii led 21-19 when the Ramblers scored six of the next seven points to go up two sets to none.

UH’s only point during the final 6-1 run came on a Loyola Chicago service error. The Ramblers scored three of their points on errors by UH and another on their sixth ace of the match.

The Rainbow Warriors will have four days off before playing four matches in three days next week.

Hawaii has doubleheaders against Roberts Wesleyan and Rockhurst in reverse order on Wednesday and Friday.

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Hawaii

2026 Sony Open field is announced. See who’s playing in Hawaii

Published

22 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

2026 Sony Open field is announced. See who’s playing in Hawaii

The Sony Open in Hawaii has the honors of being the kickoff event to the 2026 PGA Tour season after the cancellation of The Sentry at Kapalua this season.

Instead of Maui, the Tour debuts in Honolulu on the island of Oahu, Jan. 15-18, at the Seth Raynor-designed Waialae Country Club, where Nick Taylor prevailed in a playoff over Nico Echavarria last year.

Among the changes this season is the field size, which was reduced from 144 to 120, and, there is no longer is a Monday qualifier offering four spots. Will that help with pace of play? Stay tuned.

The field includes the following notables in addition to Taylor and Echavarria: Daniel Berger, Keegan Bradley, Michael Brennan, Corey Conners, Tony Finau, Chris Gotterup, Brian Harman, Russell Henley, Billy Horschel, Robert MacIntyre, Collin Morikawa, Adam Scott, Jordan Spieth, Sahith Theegala, Gary Woodland and 62-year-old Vijay Singh.

Here’s the full field for the Sony Open, which will be live on Golf Channel all four days as well as NBC with early-round coverage on Saturday and Sunday.

This year’s Sony purse is $9.1 million and the winner also will receive 500 FedEx Cup points.

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