Eagles soar to first state girls volleyball title in nearly a decade

It was a clean sweep for state title No. 5 for the Hawaii Baptist girls volleyball team.

The top-seeded Eagles got a match-high 17 kills and 10 digs from senior outside hitter Marisa Nakata to sweep Le Jardin, 25-20, 25-20, 25-16, Saturday night at the Cannon Activities Center.

HBA played too tough sets before using a 12-5 run in set three to pull away for their biggest win of the match.

“It was just looking at the end goal and everything that we’ve worked for and everything that we’ve been through as a team,” Nakata said. “I think we just really wanted it a lot more and I think those last couple of points we really dug deep and gave everything we got.”

The Eagles (13-2) split their regular season meetings with the Bulldogs (11-5), including a straight set loss on Oct. 11, but dominated the service line with seven aces in the state title match.

“We attacked them,” HBA coach Myles Shioji said of the serving game.

“Even when we lost to them, we attacked them. They played better that night, they were the better team that night. We attacked, we wanted to attack certain people and we did and we tried to get them out of system, tried to make it a little bit more difficult for them.”

Brooke Brennan added seven kills and three blocks, Kylie Ancheta had six kills, Makana Doane had four kills and four blocks and Asia De La Cruz had three more to round out the Eagles’ attack.

Joining Nakata in double-digit digs was Ancheta with 10 and Jaclyn Miyazawa with a team-high 12.

Sydney Kennedy had 15 kills to lead Le Jardin in the loss.

photos by andrew lee