OIA Girls Volleyball
Vaoifi lifts Mililani past Waipahu in girls volleyball


  

Wed, Sep 4, 2013 @ Mililani [ 5:00 pm ]


FINAL  1   2   3   4   5      
WAIP (1-10) 8 18 0 - - 0
MIL (16-1) 25 25 0 - - 2




MILILANI — Ashlee Vaoifi is a hands-on type of learner.

The senior outside hitter put to use a brand-new serve she just learned last week to help Mililani to a sweep of Waipahu in an Oahu Interscholastic Association Western Division girls volleyball match Wednesday night. The scores were 25-8 and 25-18.

A crowd of about 400 at the Trojans' gymnasium saw the home team improve to 2-0 on the season. The Marauders, a Division II team, fell to 0-3.

Vaoifi led the way for Mililani with six service aces to go along with four kills. She served a string of nine straight points in the first set, including four consecutive aces.

"I actually learned that serve last week in practice," said Vaoifi, who is 5 foot 5. "I kind of just threw it out there and it just worked. I did it in the last game, but it's a new things for me. I guess it's good to try new things."

Crabbe said the tough serving was not by design.

"We work hard on the serve and we concentrate a lot on it," Crabbe said. "We practice a lot of serving during practice."

A scrappy Waipahu block gave Mililani some trouble early in game one, but Vaoifi said the Trojans adjusted by going with a faster attack through its middles — Kristen Miguel and Sarah Liva.

"We came out strong, but we didn't think that they would have that big a block, but when they came out strong, we just came out stronger," Vaoifi said. "We knew they were reading the outside, so we tried running a few balls inside, closer to the middle, and that's when we started finding the openings in the block."

Crabbe said it was a matter of getting sets closer to the new for the hitters.

"We weren't really getting any real offense going, a lot of the hitting was from behind the 10-foot line and we're actually better at coverage, it's just that the coverage was too far back, because the hits were coming from the 10-foot line and we didn't really expect that, I guess, but it was good," Crabbe said. "It was nice to see how Waipahu blocked some balls and to see how we responded to that, too."

Mililani had built a 16-6 by the time Vaoifi's serving streak was done and extended its lead to 17-8 on Kayla Magbaleta's second ace of the set. A Waipahu error closed out game one in favor of Mililani, 25-8.

The Marauders took an early 5-3 lead in game two, but the Trojans used an 14-2 run to pull ahead, 16-7. Mililani extended its lead to 23-10 following three straight aces by Miguel, but Waipahu pulled to within 24-18 before a service error ended the match.

The Trojans committed just two errors in game two and 10 for the match. Miguel finished with four aces and two kills. Mililani had 14 aces for the match. Malaeotanifa Tagovailoa had three kills and two blocks and Jolynn Mariko added three aces and a kill to lead Waipahu.

"It was a good match in the sense that we're executing the things we work on in practice," Crabbe said. "We were able to run some plays and it's always nice when that happens."

Both teams return to the court Saturday. Mililani hosts Kapolei while Waipahu hosts Campbell.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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