WAILUKU — The Molokai High School baseball team is ready for the next step.

The Farmers finished an impressive 8-0 run through the Maui Interscholastic League Division II ranks with a 7-0 win over Seabury Hall in the final of the MIL tournament on Friday night at Maehara Stadium. A Seabury Hall win would have forced a winner-take-all game today for the single MIL spot to state.

“Yeah, glad we got this out of the way — we didn’t want to go to tomorrow,” Molokai coach Keahi Rawlins said. “We’re a little short-handed, the boys were I think overly anxious today, but we got the job done. A win is a win in this situation.”

Hoolei Arce, a junior right-hander, pitched a complete-game one-hitter with nine strikeouts and two walks. Arce was nursing a sprained left hand after he tripped at second base in a win over Hana on Thursday.

The Farmers are now headed to the D-II state tournament in Hilo, May 4-7.

“We’ll be ready,” Arce said of the state tournament. “Automatic.”

Added Rawlins: “We coaches will go home Monday and do our best to get these boys prepared. We told them it’s going to be a step up in competition when we get there and to be ready for everything. Hitting-wise, pitching-wise, we just have to be prepared the best that we can.”

Arce was tough all night long.

“Awesome job,” Rawlins said. “We always bring him out like two or three innings. So today we wanted to see what he did late in the game and he responded well. To me, he got better the longer the game went on.”

The Farmers scored their first run on an error and their second on a sacrifice fly by Gavin Ainoa.

Molokai pushed the lead to 3-0 in the second inning before adding the fourth and fifth runs on errors in the third.

In the bottom of the fifth, Ainoa led off with a triple and was knocked in by Solomon Kikukawa-Teriong. Kikukawa-Teriong scored on a single by Angelo Duvauchelle to push the lead to 7-0.

Seabury Hall coach Joe McFarlin tipped his cap to the Farmers — the Spartans finished the season 5-3 with all three of the losses to the MIL champions.

“All around, they did everything well tonight — pitching, defense, hitting, base running — they played good baseball,” McFarlin said. “They could make some noise at the state tournament. They keep on getting better every single game from the three games that we played them this year.

“First game, second game, this game, they played pretty much perfect.”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com

Seabury Hall 000 000 0–0 1 6

Molokai 212 020 x–7 8 2

Bryson Tasaki, Brayden Cabanilla (5) and Finn Hagen; Hoolei Arce and Gavin Ainoa. W–Arce. L–Tasaki. 2B–Molokai, Kilinahe Puhi, Solomon Kikukawa-Teriong. 3B–Molokai, Ainoa.

Leading hitters–Molokai, Kikukawa-Teriong 2-3, run, RBI; Puhi 2-3.