Stars of the Maunakea Coin Contest: Pāhoa High and Intermediate School
Look back through the archives of past Maunakea Coin Contest winners and you’ll see a pattern - Pāhoa High and Intermediate School. Despite only having under 800 students, Pāhoa has taken home top places every year since 2022, with a highly decorated cast of students. “We’re like a secret little art school,” said Pāhoa High art teacher Jeanne McLaury. The secret? The support of teachers and the school community, and a unit in art class dedicated to coin contest designs to build students’ skills and confidence.
Winners of the 2026 Maunakea Coin Contest at AstroDay East in Hilo
History of the Coin Contest
The Maunakea Coin Contest is a yearly competition to make a design for a collector’s coin open to all Hawai`i Island K-12 students. The designs should represent Maunakea and include different aspects of this majestic mountain including its natural resources, astronomy, and culture. The winners are announced each year at AstroDay in Hilo. The winning designs are available as bronze coins at the First Light Bookstore at the Visitor Information Station on Maunakea, while aluminum versions are available at Maunakea Astronomy Outreach Committee (MKAOC) events throughout the year.
The goal for the contest is for students to feel more familiar with Maunakea through art, explained Kumiko Usuda-Sato, Public Outreach Specialist at Subaru Telescope,
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and chair of the Maunakea Coin Contest Committee on behalf of the Maunakea Astronomy Outreach Committee (MKAOC). “This mountain is extremely significant culturally, scientifically, and genealogically. We want students to make strong connections between themselves and the mountain,” she continued.
The Coin Contest began in 2011, but the idea first sprouted in 2009, when the global astronomy community celebrated the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) – the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first observation with a telescope. Maunakea Observatories held many celebrations and projects for the IYA, but one was a cosmic poster contest. The prompt was “Celebrate IYA in our Hawaiian way,” including astronomy and Hawaiian culture in one design. The contest award ceremony at AstroDay in Hilo was full of congratulation balloons, lei, and family support for the student participants. “I saw how many families were so happy at the ceremony, and realized what a positive impact art contests could have,” explained Kumiko. When an MKO outreach committee member proposed making a Maunakea commemorative coin, it was Kumiko who suggested turning it into a student design contest in 2011. After Kumiko moved from Hawai`i to Japan, Nadine Manset, chair of MKAOC, took over leadership of the contest and ensured its continuation. Kumiko returned to lead the contest again in 2023. Over the past fifteen years, the contest has been a remarkable success, highlighting and celebrating the creativity of Hawai`i Island students.
Pāhoa High and Intermediate School Coin Contest Winners
2026
Joefrey Trez Canete (1st overall, 1st in Grades 9-12)
Shaianne Hoopai-Troche (3rd in Grades 9-12)
Liliy Newcomb (special mention)
2025
Ros Haleyah Mari Asuncion Ganot (1st overall, 3rd in Grades 9-12)
Madayson Hiʻilani Freitas (2nd overall, 1st in Grades 9-12)
Kaiea Narciso (special mention)
2024
Ros Haleyah Mari Asuncion Ganot (2nd overall, 3rd in Grades 9-12)
Krizza Veniee Marcelo (2nd in Grades 9-12)
Christian Gio Acosta (special mention)
2023
Lindsey Nicole Julian (1st overall, 1st in Grades 9-12)
Ros Haleyah Mari Asuncion Ganot (3rd overall, 3rd in Grades 9-12)
2022
Luche Angeline Mardie Asuncion Ganot (1st overall, 1st in Grades 9-12)
Ros Haleyah Mari Asuncion Ganot (2nd overall, 1st in Grades 5-8)
2019
Luche Angeline Mardie Asuncion Ganot (special mention)
Ingredients for a winning design
What has built this dynasty of Coin Contest winners from Pāhoa High and Intermediate School? At Pāhoa High, Jeanne McLaury has her students begin working on their coin contest designs as soon as possible in her Drawing and Painting class. The contest has been announced in November in recent years, at the AstroDay West event in Kona. “We take a scientific approach, and really treat it as a research project,” explained Jeanne. She encourages students to research constellations, Hawaiian moʻolelo (stories), native flora and fauna, and other cultural and ecological elements. Each year, one of the common strengths judges comment on in her students’ artworks is a demonstration of their knowledge of significant symbols, constellations, and stories in Hawaiian culture. “It’s a very educational contest,” Kumiko said. “The purpose is to increase awareness of the many aspects of Maunakea,” and the Pāhoa students do a great job of that. “I really do emphasize to the students to pay attention to the details - flora, fauna, Hawaiian legends, astronomy,” Jeanne elaborated. They also look through past coin contest winners and judges’ comments to gain a sense of what Kumiko and the other judges are looking for in a winning design.
After doing their research and creating an initial draft, Jeanne’s students set their designs aside until the beginning of the second semester. Then, in January, they revisit their designs and revise. By this point, her students have completed a pen and ink drawing unit and gotten plenty of practice in those techniques. “Coming back to their coin designs after the pen and ink unit is a chance to refine those skills with greater detail,” Jeanne said. The chance to revisit their designs allows students to demonstrate how they’ve grown in their technical art skills over the course of the year, which is rewarding and satisfying both for Jeanne and for them.
A crucial element of challenge in this assignment is scale. A design that looks great on a sheet of paper may be too detailed, complicated, or “busy” to work effectively on a nickel-sized coin. This challenge requires students to simplify and clarify their designs for the intended scale. Jeanne intends to expand this assignment into her Sculpture class for the first time this year, by using the school’s laser cutter to etch students’ designs into wooden coins.
The assignment is also an opportunity to broaden the students’ audience; another good lesson to learn as a young artist. “Not everything you do as an artist is for you,” explained Jeanne, from competitions like the Coin Contest to applications for art school, submissions to exhibitions, or commissions. “When drawing for a different audience, they have to have a different perspective on what they're doing,” she said, which pushes them to develop as artists.
Support and encouragement from teachers is a huge part of these students’ success. “I try to make them see that this is a secret little art school here at Pāhoa!” exclaimed Jeanne. “We have a lot of amazing, talented artists.” While entering the contest is not a requirement for the class, Jeanne encourages her students to take the initiative and submit their designs themselves. “Sometimes they just need a little bit of positive encouragement, to see that they should feel proud of their work,” she said. She tries to keep her class atmosphere and feedback very positive, to support students in developing their self-confidence and creativity.
Grand prize winnders from Pāhoa
Art and culture
The Coin Contest is just one part of Jeanne’s culturally-grounded art curriculum. As Kumiko said, the goal of the Coin Contest is to encourage local students to explore how they connect with the mountain. Jeanne’s assignments throughout the year help build that connection for her students. Later in the year as they move into their painting unit, they learn about famous artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and his iconic “Starry Night” painting. She has them do their own Hawai`i version, which is “Starry Night on Maunakea.” Students create paintings with Maunakea in the foreground and their own starry night design in the background. She talks with them about what it’s like to go up Maunakea at night - “I always say, there’s more stars than sky.” Jeanne says this assignment is always popular with students, and she sees a huge variety of different designs each year. Assignments like these resonate with local students and reflect their life and culture here in Hawai`i. Ideally, they leave her art class feeling more connected with Hawai`i and Maunakea.
For teachers all over Hawai`i Island, the Coin Contest is a great opportunity to collaborate between disciplines. Often, many students enter the contest as part of their history or Hawaiian studies classes. “But I think there’s a great benefit of doing it as a unit in art class,” said Jeanne, and collaborating with teachers across other subjects. The Coin Contest can blend art techniques and cultural studies, with the potential to deepen students’ development in both areas.
Judging the coin contest
This cross-disciplinary approach reflects how Kumiko puts together the judges panel each year. For the category judges, she brings together professionals with different backgrounds – Hawaiian cultural practitioners, astronomers from the observatories, and environmental science members of the Center for Maunakea Stewardship (CMS) – to reflect the multidisciplinary nature of the contest. This judge panel selects the top 3 winners of each category: Grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12, often reviewing 400-500 designs. Then Kumiko shows the nine winning designs to the grand judge with all name, age, and school information hidden. “This way, the grand judge will look with fresh eyes, focusing just on the design quality,” explained Kumiko. The grand judge changes approximately every three years. Each judge brings a different perspective and expertise to the Coin Contest, and Kumiko enjoys seeing which design elements catch different judges’ eyes. “Through the contest we aim to increase awareness of the various diverse aspects of Maunakea,” she said, “so the judges try to reflect that.”
Celebrating Coin Contest winners
At Pāhoa, the coin contest is a big deal. They present the awards in front of the whole school, recognizing all the students who did well, and all the awards remain displayed in the art classroom to inspire future classes. It really is a point of pride both for the school and for the individual students, Jeanne emphasizes.
“The coin contest really is a wonderful learning and growth opportunity.”
She loves seeing students improve their designs each year and continue to succeed. For example, her student Haleyah Ganot placed in the top three overall in 2022, 2023, 2024, and finally won the grand prize in 2025. “She just stuck at it, and she did an amazing job. She was never discouraged when she didn’t quite make it; she just knew she could keep going,” explained Jeanne. For her, watching students progress is one of the most rewarding parts of being a teacher. “You get the raw material in 9th grade, and by the time they graduate, it's so cool to see how far they’ve come.” The thoughtful, culturally-grounded curriculum students get in Jeanne’s art classes certainly helps them grow through that journey. And the sustained pattern of Pāhoa students’ success in the Coin Contest is a sign that this curriculum is really working.
It’s really rewarding to see Pāhoa students continually succeed in the Coin Contest, Jeanne said. “It makes me feel like we must be doing something right here.”
Explore past winners’ designs here, and stay posted for AstroDay West in Kona this November for the start of the 2027 Maunakea Coin Contest!
