LIHUE — Waimea High School and Kapaa High School volleyball teams survived scares on Friday night during the Kauai Interscholastic Federation boys’ volleyball games.
Playing against Island School at the Wilcox Gymnasium on the Puhi campus, the Warriors needed five sets to take their road trip, three to 2 sets.
On the road at the new Kauai High School gymnasium, Waimea took both ends of their trips, the Junior Varsity walking off with a 2-1 victory (25-21, 25-18, and 7-15). The Menehune, suffering a straight-set loss to Island School on Tuesday, returned to take the Red Raider series in four sets — 25-20, 23-25, 28-26, and 25-17.
After dropping the first set by five points, Kauai High School came back in the second set when Christian Vito pulled the Red Raiders out of a 7-7 logjam. Vito served up just enough points for the 11-9 lead that Kauai held for the remainder of the contest, where Dylan Takata did most of the work. Waimea answered with hits from Kaylo Labanon and Kulea Kauwe to knot the game 11-11.
Kauai was up 24-21 when Menehune Makai Simoia-Bernhardt served up three points to tie at 24-24. Waimea went up on a Kauai hitting error, and Barkley Gilman came up the middle to knot the game, 25-25. Multi-hitting miscues on both sides of the fence knotted the contest, 26-26, before a Red Raider service error and hitting error put the game away.
Following the Friday night game results, Kapaa is undefeated in boys’ volley ball and has the first-round lead with two more games on tap. Waimea High School and Island School are tied with two wins apiece heading into the next set of games on Tuesday.
Kapaa will make the trek to face Waimea at the Clem Gomes Gym when the JV games tip-off starting at 5 p.m., and the varsity contest starts 25 minutes following the end of the JV game.
Kauai High School will face Island School at the Wilcox Gymnasium in a single contest starting at 6:30 p.m.
