Alika Ahu ’26

Prep profile: Alika Ahu is a hoops standout and a top baseball prospect

By Paul Honda, Star-Advertiser 03.04.25

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ALL PHOTOS: MARCO GARCIA/SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR ADVERTISER

University Lab’s Alika Ahu (23) tries to grab a loose ball over Punahou’s Tate Takamiya (1) and Dane Kellner (11) during the first half of the state boy’s basketball semifinal play off game at McKinley Gym on Thursday, Feb. 20.

Somewhere high above the Kaiwi Channel, during a flight from Oahu to Maui, Alika Ahu simply felt gratitude.

It was the week of a baseball tournament on Maui, days before the HHSAA Boys Basketball State Championships. Ahu would board his flight in the morning, on stand-by, arrive in Kahului and play shortstop for the Pac-Five Wolfpack.

Then he would head back to the airport, fly into HNL and get to basketball practice with the University Lab Jr. Rainbows.

The feat was worth the effort, but few have done the daily commute for two sports. Tiare Ahu, his mother, is a vice principal at Kamehameha Schools. She is also employed at Hawaiian Airlines, which means her oldest son can travel stand-by.

Twenty-six years with the airline, a two-job supermom.

“I just remember being grateful that my mom has flight benefits that allow me to fly back and forth like that for free,” Alika Ahu said. “Without that it wouldn’t have been possible.”

The double-duty life is just part of the world Ahu lives in while maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average. The 6-foot-3, 190-pound junior is one of the top baseball prospects in the state and has already committed to Stanford.

In an era where tall, strong, fast athletes often connect to football and Pylon year round, Ahu was born into a family with basketball and baseball roots.

His father, Jaime Ahu, was a 6-1 forward who starred in three sports at Waiakea. Baseball was his ticket to the next level, and he played shortstop at Hawaii. By his sophomore year in college, he had grown and filled out to 6-3, 190, the same size Alika Ahu is now as a high school junior.

“I’ve seen him do things from 13, 14, wow, he’s way better than I was,” Jaime Ahu said. “Basketball-wise, I could shoot, but he’s way better. Just unstoppable with his strength and size. In baseball, he passed me by around two years ago. He’s better than I was in college. He has the work ethic and the drive. When he fails or doesn’t do well, I see him process it and use it to get better.”

Former Pac-Five coach Paul Ah Yat coached Ahu as a freshman two years ago. Ahu will sometimes close on the mound.

“Alika is on a different level. He’s got range, that first step and a cannon of an arm. On the mound, he’s hitting the 90s. At shortstop, he’s high 80s, at least,” Ah Yat said. “He’s a super humble kid. Extremely humble. He has a gift of being able to just focus on the things that matter. He blocks out the noise, the extra. With that gift, being able to compartmentalize things, that’s what they teach you when you’re in pro ball.”

For the record, Ahu’s preference is shortstop.

“Playing short is more fun. I like fielding. Making a diving play is more thrilling,” he said. “I don’t put a lot into pitching, maybe one or two (workouts) a week for my arm, but I don’t work on it that much.”

Current Pac-Five coach Reyn Sugai is also a ULS alum.

“I saw Alika play in eighth grade on the intermediate team. He always had great hands and footwork defensively,” Sugai said. “He just carried himself differently from most guys. A natural confidence and natural leader. His leadership this year has definitely surpassed expectations even with him playing basketball. His dedication to baseball, a lot of people don’t really see.”

Every night, after basketball practice, Ahu and his father headed back to campus and loaded up the pitching machine. He got roughly 70 cuts per night.

“The discipline day to day is something you see in pro athletes. He and his (younger) brothers balance their schoolwork and have that work ethic,” Sugai added.

For programs without a field or a gym, University and Pac-Five are in maximum efficiency mode.

“The pride is coming back,” Sugai said. “I see that in Alika, too.”

Basketball was instrumental when Ahu went from Manoa Elementary School to ULS in sixth grade. Koa Laboy, Trey Ambrozich, Todd McKinney, Kenna Quitan and Ahu were busy playing club basketball in the offseason. In a school of less than 200 students, everyday talk-story was about academic challenges and rumination on weekend games with their club teams. The group played for former boys varsity coach Walt Quitan, Kenna’s father.

“I’m a Kamehameha graduate,” Tiare Ahu said. “But when Alika got to University Lab, he found an immediate community with those boys in basketball. It was pretty special. It was a place he could grow. Jaime is pretty akamai with that, knowing that playing varsity baseball, seeing varsity pitching velocity, that would only help Alika. The seniors on that team were so awesome.”

That, in a nutshell, is a big reason why the straight-A son of a Kamehameha administrator stayed at ULS rather than become a Warrior scholar-athlete.

“It’s such a blessing for us. At no other school did I think our boys would play varsity sports from freshman year,” Jaime Ahu said.

Younger brother Austen Ahu, a freshman pitcher, throws a fastball in the mid- to high-80s. He is in a rotation that includes No. 1 starter and UH commit Colten Amai-Nakagawa.

Alika Ahu is passing down what was gifted to him during his first year in varsity sports.

“He always gravitated toward the older kids. They always hung out at school and they were good role models for the younger kids,” Jaime Ahu said. “They made the younger ones feel welcome and part of the team.”

University caught a wave in hoops with the current core of multi-sport athletes. In 2022-23, unseeded ULS reached the D-II state final, losing to top seed Kohala, 40-38.

In 2023-24, the Jr. ‘Bows reached the semifinal round and lost, 53-52, to Seabury Hall. They missed Ambrozich, who was sidelined with a back injury.

A bitter taste lingered. As expected, despite a young bench, the Jr. ’Bows moved up to D-I this winter. There were plenty of highlights for Ahu and the Jr. ‘Bows in the 2024-25 season. He scored a team-high 20 points in a 49-48 win at No. 2-ranked Punahou that vaulted ULS into a second-place tie. When the teams met a week later in a tiebreaker playoff for second place and a state-tournament berth, Punahou won, 53-50, though Ahu had a team-high 18 points.

Coach Ryan Tong’s squad qualified for the state championships by finishing third in the brutally tough ILH. Ahu’s tip-in with three-tenths of a second left lifted ULS over Kamehameha, 51-49, in the third-place playoff. At one time or another, all seven ILH D-I teams were ranked in the Top 10 at least once.

Overcoming early- and mid-season injuries and illnesses, University made the postseason count. The team was relatively healthy at the right time.

This is when Ahu weighed his options and decided he would not miss any ULS basketball practices or Pac-Five baseball games. The Wolfpack tied Maui, 1-all, then beat King Kekaulike, 1-0, before losing to Baldwin, 7-4, flying back and forth each of those days. Two days after the baseball tournament, Ahu and his University teammates flew to Maui for the opening round of the state basketball tournament. The Jr. ’Bows edged Kamehameha-Maui, 42-41, on a last-second drive and bucket by Ahu.

In the quarterfinal round two days later, University stunned OIA champion Kailua, 51-45. Ahu scored 11 points in the program’s biggest D-I state-tournament win in years.

The Jr. ’Bows run came to an end in the semifinals, a 49-46 loss to eventual state champion Punahou. Ahu led ULS with 19 points. In the three games with a potential title at stake, Ahu averaged 12 points on 16-for-30 shooting from the field (53%), adding 3.7 rebounds per game.

University (21-13) closed the season at No. 3 in the Top 10. The bond and pride of wearing the green and white hasn’t been this strong in a generation.

“Alika has always been even-keeled through the highs and lows. He was expressing a lot of intensity on the basketball court this year,” Jaime Ahu said. “I was, ‘Wow, who’s this guy?’”

The team will return most of the roster next season, though filling the void of outgoing senior Laboy will be a major task.

“I’m hoping everyone comes back. If we can stay healthy and continue to progress and develop, I’m excited about next year,” Tong said. “Alika’s obviously going to have to play a major role for us again. He’s done it since freshman year. He’s always had to guard the best player. He’s one of the best defenders in the state. A lot of our success is the result of Alika’s performance. He’s really steady. It’s a luxury to have a player that is able to not just play 1 through 5, but what’s more important, he can guard 1 through 5. It’s extremely rare and it’s extremely valuable.”

Last year, as a sophomore, Ahu batted .326 with an on-base percentage of .466 in ILH play. He had 14 runs scored and seven stolen bases. On the mound, Ahu had a 3.49 ERA with 11 strikeouts and four walks in 24 innings pitched.

In the summer, Ahu was at a baseball combine for incoming juniors. College coaches were in a blackout period, unable to directly contact parents and players until Aug. 1. One coach walked past Jaime Ahu.

“I love the way your son plays,” he said.

After the combine, Alika Ahu was on a flight back to Honolulu when the clock struck midnight. Aug. 1 had arrived. When his plane landed, he checked his text messages.

“His phone just blew up,” Jaime Ahu said. “TCU, Oregon, USC. All these big schools trying to be the first to talk to him. UH, too. My wife calls me a half-hour after they got off the phone. ‘You’ve got to come home. This is too much for us to handle.’”

Alika Ahu was stunned.

“I was expecting messages. I knew they would call, but not that many,” he said.

When dad got home, mom had already set up a spreadsheet listing 30 coaches and their phone numbers. That was roughly half of all the texts and calls. Hours later, it was all for naught. Alika Ahu knew who he wanted to spend his college years with.

“It was 10 a.m.,” Jaime Ahu recalled. “He said, ‘I want to go to Stanford.’ I asked him, ‘You don’t want to visit other colleges?’ He said, ‘I don’t need that. I can use the weekends to train.’”

Alika Ahu got on his phone and replied to all 60-plus schools.

“I told them I was committed to Stanford. It was hard. Some of them were mad,” he said. “Most of them were professional about it.”

Pac-Five is 2-4-1 after two weeks of a tough nonconference schedule. The ‘Pack opens ILH action March 12 against Saint Louis at Ala Wai Field. Last year’s team was 2-15 in ILH play.

“They’re going to be special this year,” Ah Yat said.

Ahu believes the team is cohesive.

“We have more chemistry. We’re pretty tight together,” he said. “A good season would mean a lot. We work hard and practice hard. When we practice (at Keehi Lagoon), we find a ride or drive. Everyone here is just used to playing at different fields.”

Sunday morning is a rare moment of relative stillness. More gratitude. The Ahu ohana attends C4 Christ-Centered Community Church in East Honolulu.

“My favorite thing about church is worship,” Alika Ahu said. “The atmosphere when everyone is singing and worshipping God.”

Alika Ahu 

University Lab School baseball, basketball • 6-3, 190 • Junior 

Top 3 movies/shows 

1. “The Sandlot”

2. “Moneyball”

3. Coach Carter”

“I’ve seen ‘Sandlot” around 15 times. ‘Moneyball’ is about doing what you got to do to win.”

Top 3 foods/drinks 

1. Loco Moco (Diamond Head Grill)

2. Korean fried chicken and chili plate (Zippy’s)

3. Sirloin steak

Top 3 homemade food 

1. Protein shake (GNC whey protein powder, peanut butter, chocolate chips, honey)

2. Mom’s pancakes

3. Mom’s cookies

Top 3 music artists/favorite song 

1. J Boog

2. Topshakaz

3. Barrington Levy

Favorite team: Chicago Cubs

“My grandpa (Henry Butch Robinson) is a huge Cubs fan.’

Favorite athlete: Javy Baez

“But he left (the Cubs) and he’s not good anymore. Maybe Corey Seager.”

Funniest teammate: Ethan Kamahele or Thomas Mitchell.

“One is from basketball and the other is from baseball. Ethan could be a stand-up comedian. Thomas, I can’t explain it. He has jokes.”

Smartest teammate: Kian Sanchez

“Because he’s going to Stanford.”

GPA: 4.0.

“I get my homework done early at school so I can get sleep.”

Favorite teacher/class: Ms. (Betty) Skiles, chemistry

“She teaches well and she’s nice. It’s not easy, but she makes it easier.”

Favorite scripture: Joshua 1:9 “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Bucket list: “Play for Team USA, Stanford, any MLB team. Go on a vacation trip with my friends, probably to the Big Island.”

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self?

“Have fun, play hard, work hard.”

Shoutouts

“Nana Jeanne Robinson, Mom, Dad, and my two younger brothers Aaron and Austen.”