The Maui Interscholastic League claimed four individual titles at the Texaco/HHSAA state wrestling tournament on Saturday, but there’s little doubt the most dramatic of those crowns belonged to Kivah Caballero.

The Lahainaluna High School senior was trailing Iolani’s Maya Rose DeAngelo by a point in the waning seconds of their 122-pound state final when Caballero scored a two-point takedown to grab a 5-4 win just before the buzzer signaling the end of the match.

“I just had to give it my all, it was looking (bad), but I had to do it,” Caballero said. “I was just thinking: ‘Am I going to do it?’ She was super strong and I just knew I had to do something.

“I didn’t care about the time or how much I had left, I just went for it and it worked.”

Caballero’s amazing win capped the night for the MIL in the finals session that took more than four hours to finish at the Cannon Activities Center on the Brigham Young University Hawaii campus.

Caballero’s match was the 25th of 28 individual finals.

A couple hours earlier, Lahainaluna’s Keawe Kane-Keahi won the 195-pound boys title moments after close friend Naiomi Kulukulualani-Sales claimed the 107 girls crown.

The first state title for the MIL on Saturday night came when Kamehameha Maui sophomore Mikah Labuanan won the 132 title one year after winning the 126 crown.

The Lunas finished second in the girls team chase and Baldwin was third.

“Me and my teammates have been working so hard since the beginning of the year and we all said, ‘This is our year, we’re all going to end up on top’ and we did that,” Caballero said. “I saw ‘Omi pin that girl and I just had to be there with her, stand on the podium right after her — ‘Omi is my (training) partner, so I couldn’t disappoint her.”

Kulukulualani-Sales rolled to the 107 crown with four pins in four state matches — the longest time she spent on the mat was the 3 minutes, 33 seconds it took her to pin Punahou’s Tatiana Paragas in the final.

Kulukulualani-Sales was the state runner-up at 107 last season.

“I’m just like very excited and emotional right now,” Kulukulualani-Sales said. “I can’t believe I did it. I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a little girl. I’m so excited that I’ve actually accomplished it.”

Kulukulualani-Sales said the state crown has changed her thoughts on pursuing the sport in college.

“Definitely, it’s making me rethink about my whole future,” she said.

The match immediately following Kulukulualani-Sales’ title was Kane-Keahi winning the boys 195 crown, 3-2 over Maika Kahele Akeo of Kapolei. Kulukulualani-Sales stayed on the floor to watch up close.

“It was awesome, he’s like a brother to me, so it was just amazing that both of us got our win,” Kulukulualani-Sales said. “It’s pretty tough to win a state title. Once you get to the semifinals, it just gets harder and harder.”

Kane-Keahi, a standout football player for the Lunas as well, said he is also now considering wrestling in college.

“It feels amazing, it feels super good — I’m excited the work paid off,” Kane-Keahi said.

He was fired up for his state final after watching Kulukulualani-Sales’ win up close on the gym floor. He was second at 182 last year.

“Last year at states she went right before me, and she lost, so we both lost last year,” Kane-Keahi said. “So, it was a big thing for us to both win.”

Kane-Keahi added that Kulukulualani-Sales’ victory “fired me up a lot, gave me an extra boost of confidence.”

Labuanan rolled to the final with a pin and two technical falls, but in the final he had to come from behind to beat Mililani’s Jaren Kimura 5-4. Kimura dealt Labuanan his only loss of the season at the officials tournament in December in a match that ended with two penalty points being whistled on Labuanan as time wound down.

Early in Saturday’s match it appeared that Labuanan had Kimura very close to pinned, but Kimura bounced back and held a 4-3 lead with less than a minute to go before Labuanan scored a takedown to take the lead for good.

“It feels surreal,” Labuanan said of his second state crown. “The feeling definitely tops last year’s, especially with how things went at officials and how we had it with the refs. It just feels so much better than last year.”

Labuanan is now halfway to becoming the first four-time boys state wrestling champion from the MIL.

“I can’t wait for the next two years, but my plan is just to keep working hard every day and know that there’s people out there with a target on my back, there’s people out there targeting me,” he said. “I know that if I stop working hard, they are going to catch up.”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.