Rickard

The Lahainaluna High School girls basketball team has not lost a regular season game since 2008 and currently has a 102-game winning streak in Maui Interscholastic League play. The Lady Lunas’ unbeaten, all sport record in regular season games will probably grow, as there is but one senior on the roster this year and the youth leagues here on the West Side continue year after year to pump more new synergy into the high school program.

Throughout this probably unbreakable run, there has been one notable constant: the leader of the Lady Lunas’ hoop dreams in head coach Todd Rickard.

He has had a trusty sidekick through most of his 25 years at the helm of the program in assistant Ian Aotaki, but Coach Todd is the main man when you stop to analyze Lady Luna basketball in the entirety of the streak.

He is a Lahaina grown boy through and through – born, raised, living, working and coaching on the West Side – and manifests the tradition and culture of the Lahaina community.

Todd and his wife, Emerlita, extend the ‘ohana values of their families in raising their three children, Rachel, TJ and Trey.

Perhaps above all, Coach Todd represents that Lahaina work ethic forged in the Lahaina sun and passed down to him by his parents, Pikake and Scotty Rickard.

Thus, number two son (of three boys) Todd works a “40 for 40” week with the County of Maui on the West Side and then with the Lady Lunas and the middle school menehune basketball teams. This goes on for 11-plus months of the year.

His Lahainaluna teams are perennially in the top five in statewide polls for the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, have captured ten consecutive MIL titles and make regular appearances in the final four in the state championship tournament.

They won the title in 2010 to become the only Neighbor Island school in history to win a state championship in girls or boys basketball.

A list of student athletes that played for Rickard and parlayed that experience into a college education includes Aina Kohler, Rachel Rickard, Milika Taufa, Maiki Viela, Hiilei Bacalso and Jade Chihara.

That vital tradition – the ability to create a pathway to higher education that the families of Lahaina might not be able to otherwise navigate – is indeed priceless.

Coach Todd is an intense competitor with the steely eyes of a tiger shark. He is also a humble man who continually diverts attention away from himself. He always speaks of the team, of the school, of the community. The tradition continues.

Way to go, Coach Todd. Imua Lahainaluna!