The Kula High School Cross Country Team

The Kula High School cross country team runs year-round. Early mornings on the slopes of Haleakalā, through eucalyptus groves and upcountry pastures, the team logs miles the way most people log hours — steadily, quietly, as a matter of routine.

When Coach Leilani Akana heard about Steps for Lahaina at a Maui athletic directors' meeting in September, she brought it back to her team the next morning. She didn't pitch it as a fundraiser. She just told them what had happened to the coaches and teachers in Lahaina — people in the same profession, on the same island, forty miles away.

"I didn't ask them to do anything," Coach Akana says. "I just told them the story. And by the end of practice, three of them had already signed up on their phones."

Within a week, all forty-two members of the varsity and junior varsity squads had created walker profiles. They recruited sponsors from parents, teachers, local businesses, and alumni. One former Kula High runner, now living in Portland, pledged $2 per mile for every member of the team.

The team set a collective goal: 2,000 miles before the end of the school year. They hit it in eleven weeks — logging training runs, weekend long runs, and even PE class miles through the platform.

"The kids started competing with each other in a different way," Coach Akana says. "Not just for race times — for miles logged. Who walked to school instead of getting a ride. Who did an extra loop after practice. It changed the energy."

By December, the team had collectively raised $4,200 — enough to fund a full rebuilding grant for one Lahaina educator. At their end-of-season banquet, they read aloud a message from a Lahaina PE teacher whose grant application had been approved. Several of the athletes cried.

"That's what sport is supposed to do," Coach Akana says. "It's supposed to teach you that your effort has consequences beyond yourself. These kids learned that in a way I couldn't have planned."