Sunday, August 12, 2001
[ VOLLEYBALL ]
Williams and Li Revenge was a dish best served hot yesterday at the fourth annual Iams Players Championship at Queen's Beach.
stay hot on beach
to win Iams
The duo goes through the
losers bracket to claim
tournament titleBy Grace Wen
gwen@starbulletin.comTwenty teams competed for a $500 purse and other prizes in the men's division, but in the end the same two teams that met in the final of last weekend's Riggers Beach Volleyball Championships met again.
Alika Williams and Stevie Li launched blazing serves and outlasted Keoki Shupe and Troy Hotz to come back from the losers bracket and take the title with 15-8 and 11-4 wins. Williams and Li won for the third weekend in a row and avenged a loss suffered against Shupe and Hotz in the semifinals of the double-elimination tournament.
Shupe and Hotz sent Williams and Li to the losers bracket earlier in the afternoon with a dominating 15-8 win. It was the only loss Williams and Li have suffered all summer.
In the first final, it looked as though Hotz and Shupe were on their way to their first tournament win after jumping out to a 4-0 lead. But momentum changed swiftly as Li and Williams fought their way back to take a 10-7 lead.
"We just regrouped after that loss," Williams said. "Halfway through that final, Stevie said that we just had to outlast them and that's what happened. Troy made a few errors. He had been playing great all day and then cramped a little bit."
After the side change Williams and Li continued the strong serving and ran away with the game.
The teams battled to a 3-3 tie in the final, but a series of errors by Hotz and Shupe as well as two blocks, an ace by Li and two kills by Williams ended the game much quicker than it began.
Hotz and Shupe cited fatigue as a factor in the loss.
"My partner and I were real tired," Shupe said. "They had an extra game, so we should have been fresher, but they're in better shape than we are.
"They served so strong that we had a hard time siding out."
It was the exact opposite in the semifinal, in which Shupe and Hotz served tough and caught Williams and Li off-guard. Shupe and Hotz were ahead 11-3 before Williams and Li made a short run to bring the score to 13-7, but Shupe and Hotz pulled out the win.
"We didn't know that we were going to get a second chance at them because we had to play Pono (Maa) and Guy (Kaniho)," Li said. "We were a little worried. They were playing really well today."
Williams and Li defeated Maa and Kaniho 11-2 in the losers bracket final to set up the rematch with Shupe and Hotz.
Former Wahine volleyball player Heide Ilustre and former Vulcan Tanya Fuamatu captured their second straight tournament win, 15-3, over Lynn Sumida and Laurie Kemp. Ilustre and Fuamatu dominated the women's bracket, going undefeated and winning all their matches by at least 12 points.
"It's just the chemistry between us," Fuamatu said. "We never practice. We're so busy that we only got together (on the beach) two or three times."