WAIMEA — The Kapa‘a High School split on Tuesday night sets up a playoff contest on Friday during the Kaua‘i Interscholastic Federation girls volleyball matches at Clem Gomes Gym.
The hosting Menehune took two sets of the junior varsity contest — 25-18, 21-25 and 25-13 — to set the stage for the varsity contest where the Lady Warriors, garbed in their pink Maui Strong warmups, turned the tables on the Menehune by taking the match in three straight sets — 25-18, 25-22, and 25-23.
Kapa‘a crawled out of 5-3 hole in the opening set, and after knotting the contest several times, broke away from an 18-18 deadlock to wrap up the first set — 25-18 — on five straight serves by Kailee-Ann Baltazar. The string of points saw Kapa‘a capitalize on a Menehune hitting error and net violation before Ku‘uipomakamae Hunt sealed the deal with a whack.
Similarly in the remaining two sets, Kapa‘a had to breakthrough a logjam to win.
During the second set, Kapa‘a pulled away from a 9-7 bulge on a Hunt series of serves enhanced with hits from Kanoe Haneberg and Hunt before Waimea deadlocked the set at 16-16. Kapa‘a suffered a net violation and Waimea’s outside hitter Kalia Yaris knotted the contest at 17-17.
Waimea took the lead in the second set — 21-18 — behind service from Yaris, who nailed an ace in her string of points, and a whack from Sage Chaney in the middle that caught Kapa‘a off balance.
Kapa‘a worked to knot the contest — 22-22 — on a Menehune service error, and put the contest away on four straight points served up by Hunt that was enhanced with a Hunt ace and whacks from Haneberg who sealed the deal for the 25-22 win.
Trailing 15-9 in the third set, Waimea’s libero Chaslee Aki served up five straight points with a solid Kaulana Caberto Hui Hui conk to pull to within a point — 15-14 — before Hunt pulled the Warriors up with four unanswered points enhanced with a block from the middle for a 19-14 lead.
Waimea then got six unanswered points from Caberto Hui Hui in the service block for a 22-20 bulge before Kapa‘a’s Olivia Jenkins whack put Kapa‘a up 23-20. That was followed by more tight point exchanges before Hunt put the period on the straight-set win at 25-23.
Following the competitive battle, Kapa‘a and Island School teams are tied with two losses apiece to force the playoff for the KIF first round title.
The playoff contest will take the floor at Wilcox Gymnasium on the Island School campus on Friday starting at 6:30 p.m.
The girls volleyball second round starts on Oct. 10, when Kapa‘a meets Kaua‘i at the new Kaua‘i High School gymnasium and Waimea makes the trek to Wilcox Gymnasium to face Island School. The JV contests at both sites will serve up at 5:30 p.m., with the varsity games serving up 25 minutes following the completion of the JV matches.
