Two Big Island swimmers named to Team Hawaii for Fiji championships

Two Big Island swimmers turned Kona racing into an international call-up. Kiliheamaikalani “Kinsey” Oka and Zane Imonen were named to Team Hawaii for the 2026 Oceania Swimming Championships in Suva, Fiji, and they were the only two athletes on the 14-swimmer roster from the island.

The meet is scheduled for May 8 through 13 at the Damodar City Aquatic Centre, bringing two of Kona’s best-known young distance swimmers onto a stage that reaches well beyond Hawaii County. Hawaiian Swimming said the team was selected after pools and open-water trials, and the roster reflects how heavily the state delegation leans on Oahu while still leaving room for Big Island talent to break through.

Imonen earned his spot by winning the April Kona 2.4 Mile Swim outright in 52 minutes, 44 seconds. Oka won the women’s race in 54:43. Those results mattered because the Kona event was one of the qualifying routes into Team Hawaii, and both swimmers arrived with proof that they can handle the kind of endurance racing that defines open-water competition.

For Kona Aquatics, the selection is another sign that its pipeline is producing swimmers who can travel from local ocean races to higher levels of competition. Imonen has already been identified as one of the Big Island’s top distance ocean swimmers, alongside Ethan Ng and Kelan Kennedy, and in July 2025 he was described as just 16 years old. Oka, a Kealakehe High School sophomore, was also viewed as one of the island’s top women’s open-water swimmers and was trying for a third consecutive Triple Crown Swim Race Series title, a Kona Aquatics-run circuit made up of three one-mile ocean swims.

Imonen’s path has been especially striking because he had never swum outside the country before this call-up. His move into the 10K and 5K events expected in Suva marks a major step up from the shorter mile races he has been racing at home. That jump, along with Oka’s success in both pool and ocean formats after qualifying through the pool at Iolani and winning in Kona, shows how the Big Island’s swimmers are being built for versatility, not just local dominance.

Fiji last hosted the Oceania Championships in 2016, and the Fijian federation has described the 2026 meet as a key preparation milestone for athletes targeting the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the 2026 Youth Olympic Games in Dakar. For the Big Island, the deeper meaning is simpler: Kona’s training system, its pool work, and its ocean races are sending swimmers to the international stage, and the island now has two names on the roster to prove it.