MANOA — There was little slowing down the state's top-ranked team Saturday night. 

No. 1 Iolani cruised to its first state title since 2022 with a sweep of No. 3 Kahuku to close out the New City Nissan/HHSAA Division I Girls Volleyball State Championships.

A crowd of 1,337 spectators at Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center saw the Raiders (17-1) ease their way past the Red Raiders (14-2) by set scores of 25-18, 25-13 and 25-9. 

"I think it feels really good," said setter Bailey Nakanelua, one of two seniors for Iolani this fall. 

The Raiders won their final eight matches of the year since their lone loss — a five-set defeat at Kamehameha — back on Sept. 30. 

"We worked super hard this season and I think we deserve it. We're super disciplined in what we do and I think this was our year and I'm super proud of us," said Nakanelua, who amassed 36 assists, five digs, two kills and two aces. 

Nakanelua was tabbed by the HHSAA and media covering as the tournament as its most outstanding player. She is verbally committed to Ohio State University. 

With Nakanelua at the controls, the Raiders hit .292 for the match with 11 attack errors in 113 attempts. Four different players finished with at least eight kills. Pin hitters Poema Kalama-Kingma, Georgie Lee and Taimane Ainuu put down 11, nine and eight kills, respectively, while middle blocker Elle Arceneaux tallied 10 kills on 12 swings without an error (.833 hitting percentage). 

Iolani coach Kainoa Obrey said it was easily Arceneaux's best match of the year. The explosive 5-foot-8 sophomore was also in on three blocks. 

"Oh, 100 percent. Great match by her. She had a night, for sure," Obrey said. 

Fellow sophomore middle Annaura Reid-Gillet hit .300 with four kills, three digs and 2 ½ blocks. Obrey said that while the production out of Arceneaux and Reid-Gillet did well to attract blockers away from the Raiders' slew of talented pin hitters, it would not have been possible with a steady first touch. 

"That says something about our ball-handling first and then just we can score from across the net," he said. 

"We have a really good setter that can move the ball around and all of our hitters gotta be ready and all of our hitters have big arms and they can score, so we trust each and every one of them, so it's cool to see that it's not a regular occurrence, but it probably can be said that we ball-handled really well," Obrey added. 

Obrey's squad never trailed by more than a point at any juncture of the match — which took a mere 81 minutes from start to finish. To be sure, however, the Raiders weren't taking the opposition lightly, especially given Kahuku's sweep of two-time defending state champion Kamehameha in Friday's semifinal round. 

"I thought we executed the game plan at a high level. We didn't play them, but we've seen a lot of them throughout the season when they were playing their matches — because they beat Kamehameha early in the season and that got our attention — and we just kind of expected that we might see them in the future," Obrey said. 

Nakanelua reinforced that it while she and her teammates held the Red Raiders in high regard, it was more about executing on their own side of the net. 

"Kahuku's a great team. Although we never played them and this was our first time, I think again, we're just super disciplined in what we do and we just trust our coaches and what they give us and so I think we just put it on the court and whatever they say, we do," Nakanelua stated. 

The Red Raiders, who hit .234 against Kamehameha Friday, were held to a .039 percentage Saturday. They had only four more kills (22) than they did errors (18). 

As Kahuku coach Lesina Manutai described, it was a testament to Iolani — not just its depth of talent, but its players' ability to execute the game plan. . 

"Oh man, they are so versatile," Manutai said of the Raiders. 

"They served well, they passed well, the sets were right on the money, they blocked well — they did everything really good — even got their middles involved to get a couple kills and that really helps to just kind of keep chipping away, so really good team; really good team," she added. 

Kahuku held an early 4-3 lead in set 1, but saw Iolani reel off a 17-4 run to separate en route to a seven-point margin of victory in the opening frame. Arceneaux converted all four of her attack opportunities in the first set for kills. 

A center-line violation against the Raiders brought the Red Raiders to within 11-9 in set 2, but Lee ignited a string of seven straight Iolani points with a kill off of high hands from the left side. Nakanelua capped the 7-0 run with one of her two aces on the night. 

Iolani went on to finish off set 2 with a 7-2 run that included back-to-back kills by Arceneaux out of the middle. 

The teams were tied at 4 early in set 3 after Elenoa Lauhingoa set-up her twin sister Lamona Lauhingoa for a kill from the right pin. However, the Raiders responded with a 13-1 run that included eight straight points. The run included a quartet of aces by Kalama-Kingma, who did not record a single service error in the match. 

Kahuku scored three straight points, capped by a Lamona Lauhingoa kill from the left side, to pull to within 17-9, however, Iolani closed out the match with a 8-0 run to lock up its fourth state title under Obrey and fifth overall. 

Maddix Taniguchi led Iolani defensively with 18 digs and Lee, a 2027 commit to USC, added 15 digs. Ainuu, who starred with the USA U19 National Team over the summer, tallied eight digs and Kalama-Kingma, a junior committed to the University of Oregon, added seven digs and four aces. 

Lamona Lauhingoa paced the Red Raiders attack with nine kills and 11 digs, both team-high marks. Makamae Schilling tallied four kills and seven digs, Tilauana Tonga notched 11 assists with seven digs and Elenoa Lauhingoa posted nine assists, seven digs, two kills and was in on four blocks. Taea Moeai and Keana Vendiola chipped in seven digs in apiece in the loss. 

Kahuku's blocked proved to be effective early on in the match — it had four team blocks by the end of set 1 — but recorded only two blocks the rest of the way. 

Obrey said it was a matter of making minor tweaks at the net. 

"They're big, right, so we just had to stay patient and we had to swing to good spots on the court — stay high, we can hit the ball high — and if we keep ball-handling the space will open up a little bit and it did and we took advantage of those moments, so super happy about that," he described. 

Taniguchi, the Raiders' Temple University-bound libero — the only other senior on the team — alluded to the heartbreak of falling short against Kamehameha in the 2024 state final as all the motivation her team needed to finish off this year's run. 

"We knew what it takes to be in the last match and now win the last match. We knew the grind, we knew that it couldn't stop and so I think that all the work just had to pay off and that's what we showed tonight," Taniguchi said. 

Obrey also noted the impact that the loss to the Warriors — which came almost exact a year ago — had on his players. 

"I mean, we don't regularly talk about it but it's definitely something the kids feel and they wanted to get another chance at it and through everything they've done all season they've given us a chance and we definitely capitalized on that tonight," Obrey said. 

The Raiders' return to the title game came in stark contrast to Kahuku's transformation from the end of the 2024 season. 

The Red Raiders went 1-2 at states, failed to reach the final day of the tournament and finished 12-4 overall. Over the course of the offseason, they underwent a coaching change — their second in a three-year span. 

"This group, having been through a couple coaches within the last couple of years, for them to just come out and trust me and trust the training that we go through was huge for me as a first-year coach," Kahuku's Lesina Manutai said. 

"I'm so grateful for this group. This has been the goal from the beginning and we got here. It wasn't the result that we wanted, but I'm super proud of the kids throughout the whole season," added Manutai, who played for the Red Raiders when they reached the state final in 2002 — the last time a non-Interscholastic League of Honolulu team made it to the title match. 

The Red Raiders' triumph over St. Joseph 23 years ago remains their lone state title and one of just nine won by a school outside of the ILH in the history of the state tournament's top tier, which dates back to 1969. 

Iolani, which did not drop a set in its three state tournament matches, was playing in its third state final in four years.