Rising Kalaheo sweeps Kaimuki

OIA Division II Girls Championship

The Kalaheo girls volleyball team is picking the right time of the season to play its best volleyball.

The Mustangs were the welcome recipients of 17 Kaimuki hitting errors as Kalaheo made short work of Eastern Conference top seed Kaimuki 25-10, 25-14 last night to win the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division II girls volleyball playoffs at Farrington.

Sophomore Kiana Wasson hammered down seven kills and senior captain Sabrina Blanco added six kills for the East No. 2 seed Mustangs (11-4), who won the first volleyball title in the school's history.

"It feels good to break the record of no volleyball titles at Kalaheo," Blanco said. "We have a tendency to fall behind in games, but we stayed positive the whole time and really wanted this."

The Bulldogs (10-4) struggled to find any consistency on offense, and committed six straight errors during a stretch in the first game as Kalaheo had scoring runs of eight and seven points in the game.

"We can't worry about the other team; we had to worry about ourselves first," Kalaheo coach Michelle Hoku Liu said. "We executed what we planned to do and did a good job of eliminating our mistakes."

Kaimuki committed more errors (17) than kills (12) and had problems trying to put the ball down against the taller Mustangs, who were able to get off to big starts in each of the two games. Back-to-back kills by Wasson early in Game 2 put the Mustangs up 7-2.

"We just all got together and wanted it more than they did," Wasson said.

Wasson added two blocks and junior Daneen Williams had two aces in the second game as Kalaheo built an 18-9 lead. The Bulldogs made a small run at the end, as they finally found some consistency behind junior Genesis Texeira-Fruean, who had three kills late in Game 2, but the Mustangs sealed the victory on another Bulldogs hitting error.

"In practice we try to emulate pressure situations," Liu said. "We have them deal with noise and other things and it contributed to our ability to stay poised in this type of game."

The Mustangs finished with 21 kills and committed just five hitting errors. They also had four aces, compared to just two for the Bulldogs, who finished the game without a block.