The Leilehua boys volleyball team is loving the big stage.
Toma Savea pounded down 19 kills and Leilehua beat Kalaheo 25-19, 25-22, 25-27, 25-23 in the OIA tournament at Jim Alegre Gymnasium on Tuesday night.
"At practice it seems like all coach stresses is to stay calm and not get excited," Savea said. "He puts a lot of pressure on us in practice, so when we get in these games we just come out and have fun and do our best."
The Mules, who have not lost a league match all year and swept all of them except for two, were unflappable against the OIA East’s second-best team, running out to a 16-8 lead in the first set and cruising to the finish behind Savea’s five kills and no errors. Even though Kalaheo is much bigger than Leilehua, the Mules weren’t about to back down.
"We needed to show people that we can execute in the middle," Leilehua coach Ernest Balignasay said. "Kalaheo has a good block, but we had to go right after them to show them that we were willing to."
After establishing themselves in the middle in the first set, Leilehua went to the outsides in the second, with Dakota Soliai earning five of his seven kills. The Mules held a slim 23-22 lead when Soliai blasted a kill off the block and David Tibayan roofed Kalaheo’s Luke Owens to push the Mustangs to the edge.
"We have been working on that all season," Savea said. "We put more emphasis on it for playoffs, though, because it is something that if you can do it well they can’t stop it."
Kalaheo fought back to take the third set behind an inspired Owens, who collected six kills, three of them after his team took a timeout tied at 23. But that was the only glory Kalaheo enjoyed, as Leilehua showed off its end game again in the fourth set on a quickset to Savea followed by a steamer by Soliai through the block of Kainoa Peterson and Chandler Roth to end it and send Kalaheo into the loser’s bracket, where they will need to win five matches in a row to win the tournament.
Leilehua committed only 13 errors to Kalaheo’s 19 and benefited from 11 Kalaheo service errors to only three aces.
"When you make 20 plus errors every single set, you can’t be surprised when you lose," Kalaheo coach Ed Chun said. "Leilehua kept the ball in play and put the pressure on us to make the play and we made the errors."
Leilehua moves on to face reigning OIA champion Moanalua on Thursday at Farrington, the first time this year the final two undefeated teams in the OIA have met. The Mules have not won the OIA since 1984, while Na Menehune have won the past three in a row.
"They are steady and they are fast," Balignasay said. "They have seen us and we have seen them, I am sure we will both make adjustments and see what happens."
Moanalua 3, Campbell 0
Na Menehune got 11 kills from Austin Matautia and had no trouble dispatching the Sabers 25-10, 25-14, 25-17.
Karson Cruz matched Matautia with 11 kills for Na Menehune, who got points from nine different players. The Sabers got eight kills from Nio Pouesi and only five from the rest of their roster.
Campbell was already down 12-5 when it called its first timeout in the first set and never got anything going. The Sabers tied the second set at 5-all, but Moanalua’s Victor Zamudio went on a 10-play serving run with three aces to put Moanalua in control. Matautia did the same thing in the third set, turning a 12-8 lead to 18-9 with a serving run that included two aces.
