HONOLULU — The unquestioned best in the Oahu Interscholastic Association gets a chance to settle the score Wednesday night.
Moanalua, which swept through the OIA East, and Mililani, which did the same in the West, put their matching 12-0 records on the line at McKinley High School’s Student Council Gym. Whichever side wins, it’ll be the first league title for those players.
The Spectrum OC16-televised match will begin after the 5:30 p.m. Division II final between Waialua and Waipahu.
While the Trojans swept through Roosevelt in Monday’s semifinal with relative ease, 25-14, 25-15, 25-20, Na Menehune were tested by a game Kapolei squad in a rematch of the 2022 playoffs.
Star hitter Malu Garcia was held out for the first set by Moanalua coach Alan Cabanting — he said he wanted the rest of the team to experience what it was like to have to depend only on themselves — and took Garcia a moment to find her rhythm once she was inserted in the second. But by the end she was a 19-kill, 10-dig force as Moanalua finished off the five-set comeback in convincing fashion, 24-26, 25-16, 21-25, 25-22, 15-7.
Garcia, who has committed to play at Iowa, thinks her team has another level to reach.
“That’s not even half of the percentage of our best. That’s just part of it,” Garcia told Spectrum News. “On Wednesday, our girls are going to bring it out. That’s just a glimpse of what we can do.”
Zaria Queen emerged as an effective second option for Na Menehune on Monday with 12 kills and five blocks.
Kapolei was led by Malinah Purcell-Telefoni’s match-high 20 kills while Leila Paraoan added 13 kills and a run of three straight aces in Set 4 that gave the Hurricanes an 11-8 lead and an eye on taking the match.
The Hurricanes took both teams in the championship game to five sets this season.
“To go five is good, that’s nothing to be ashamed about,” Kapolei coach Naidah Gamurot said. “But we just had that little lull at the wrong time, at the end of the fourth and going into the fifth. That was where our problem was.”
For the comeback in Set 4, Cabanting said he needed to give Jerney Tang-Silva a break from passing after a couple of shanked balls. He brought in Iana Benevides to steady the back row.
“(Iana) passed two or three balls good enough that we could set any of our big hitters, and Jerney would come back in for blocking purposes and just being big and physical at the net,” Cabanting said.
The Hurricanes fell behind 10-3 in the fifth, a lethal lapse, before they started to pick things up again.
“We just lost a little bit of momentum in that last set. I thought we were picking up momentum, there just wasn’t enough time left,” Gamurot said.
Mililani got 15 kills from Alexis Rodriguez and 12 from Erica Roberts to lead the senior-laden Trojans into the final.
Moanalua seeks its sixth OIA title, and first since 2017. Mililani is in pursuit of its fifth title after last winning back-to-back in 2018 and 2019.
In Division II, the Waialua Bulldogs are attempting to repeat after breaking through for their first title in 2022, and the Waipahu Marauders are going for their first championship since 1975, their only one to date.
Waialua (8-3) won in five sets during their West matchup with Waipahu (5-7) in the regular season.
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.