HONOLULU — Toss out the previous six. Saturday night’s lucky seventh meeting of Interscholastic League of Honolulu rivals Iolani and Kamehameha is the only one that matters.
The Raiders and Warriors earned their way into the championship match of the New City Nissan/HHSAA Division I girls volleyball tournament with sweeps of the Oahu Interscholastic Association’s top two teams, Kapolei and Moanalua, on Friday night at Punahou’s Hemmeter Fieldhouse.
Kamehameha coach Chris Blake lauded Iolani’s coaching staff and dynamic setter, Bailey Nakanelua. The defending state champion Warriors (11-6) are the only Hawaii team to take a match off the Raiders (14-1) this season, but also lost to them five times to cede the ILH title.
[Note: See below for more photos of Kapolei-Iolani in the HHSAA semifinals.]
Iolani and Kamehameha have combined for the last eight HHSAA D-I titles.
“When you see somebody and are familiar with them, sometimes it’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s not,” Blake told Spectrum News. “But when we lace them up tomorrow, it’ll be interesting, because all the matches before don’t matter. It’s a matter of how we want to play the last match of the season.”
As was the case last year, the Division I and II title matches are at BYU-Hawaii’s Cannon Activities Center on Oahu’s North Shore. It is a complete ILH affair as Hawaii Baptist Academy and Le Jardin will meet for the D-II title at 5 p.m., with Iolani and Kamehameha to follow. Kamehameha beat Punahou in a thrilling four-setter there last fall.
The Cannon’s wooden floor has been redone from when the NBA’s Golden State Warriors held training camp there last month.
Top HHSAA seed Iolani is in pursuit of a fifth state title, and second in three years under coach Kainoa Obrey. The Raiders (14-1) cruised to a 25-17, 25-20, 25-9 sweep of OIA runner-up Kapolei as the junior Nakanelua set a balanced offense with 34 assists and 14 digs.
Nakanelua got middle Georgie Lee (11 kills, .556 hitting) heavily involved and hitter Poema Kalama-Kingma also put down 11 kills. Taimane Ainu‘u had 10 kills and 10 digs.
Senior Leila Paraoan led Kapolei (13-3) with nine kills on 37 swings.
“Bailey’s a great player,” Blake said. “She’s able to distribute the ball very well. She has a lot of weapons. The tools that she has, obviously it’s best in the state. For us to be able to compete, we don’t have to do spectacular things, we just have to do things very consistently. And I think that’s part of our expectation as we’re moving forward into this match.”
Kamehameha appeared to be in for a tighter battle against previously unbeaten Moanalua (14-1), getting a stiff test in Set 1 but riding its service game to a 25-23, 25-18, 25-19 sweep.
The Warriors are aiming for a record 25th girls volleyball state title, including a 13th under Blake. No other school has more than nine.
Kala Chock had 12 kills and Kamana‘o Goldstein 10 against Moanalua. Middle Kealoha Lyons supplied eight kills against just one error (.467) and got in on five blocks.
Na Menehune got 14 kills from Zaria Queen but no more than four from any other player.
“We kept them out of system a lot, which was a testament to our service pressure and things that we were doing,” said Blake, who rated Alan Cabanting's squad favorably among teams the Warriors have seen this year, regardless of league.
The last time a non-ILH team won a girls volleyball state championship was Kahuku in 2002 in Division I and Konawaena in 2014 in Division II.
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.