Konawaena players storm the court after defeating Waimea to reach the Division II title game. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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103113_KonaWainae_0533.jpg - Greg Yamamoto | SL

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While a pair of Oahu teams will play for the Division I state championship on Hawaii Island Friday, two of the Big Island's best will vie for the Division II title on Oahu.

Chanelle Molina registered a match-high 18 kills to go with 13 digs and a block to carry Konawaena to a sweep of Waimea in a semifinal game of the New City Nissan/Hawaii High School Athletic Association D2 State Championships Thursday. A sparse crowd of just a hundred or so fans at McKinley's Student Council Gymnasium saw the Wildcats win 25-20, 25-14 and 25-23 to improve to 3-0 in the tournament and 16-3 on the season.

"Our girls were all excited about this game," Konawaena coach Ainsley Keawekane said. "I have four assistant coaches and we've watched Waimea play over the last few days, so we kind of had a gameplan going in. But we didn't want to share the gameplan with the kids; We wanted to keep it amongst the coaches, (because) we didn't feel like we had to share so much information with them. We just wanted to let them play their game and as we were down, we started to give the information that we saw over the last few days when we saw Waimea play."

Celena Molina, younger sister of Chanelle, led the Wildcats' defensively with 18 digs. She also had eight kills, two aces and a block, while Makani Wall distributed 23 assists and chipped in three kills. McKenna Ventura added seven kills and two blocks and Kaela Avanilla added five kills and a block.

"Makani Wall is a great setter and she put the balls in locations where our kids could take care of it," Keawekane said. "Our setter is like our quarterback — without a quarterback, you cannot operate. In baseball it's pitchers, in football it's the quarterback. She's our quarterback, she operated the team right and we were able to prevail."

Keawekane said part of the game plan was to key on 5-foot-11 outside hitter Mariyah Oliver, who had a team-high 18 kills for Waimea in a five-set quarterfinal win over Radford Wednesday.

"We knew that she was their big hitter," said Keawekane, who noted he has been longtime friends with Waimea coach Chad Delanoza. "I didn't know that he was the coach for Waimea, so that was pretty awesome to see him. He was also a great player in our time and I knew that he would come out with a big-time strategy against us. At the end of the third set, they came up with some big blocking, which kind of shut down our hitters, but our coaches starting noticing other things and we just started moving the balls elsewhere."

Oliver was held to nine digs, five kills and two blocks. Lei Alejandro led Waimea with seven kills and seven digs. Talia Young had eight digs, five kills with two blocks, Kawena Warren added five kills, three blocks and an ace and Bailey San Agustin notched 15 assists for the Kauai Interscholastic Federation champs.

Waimea, which fell to 14-3, will play Saint Francis in third-place game at 5 p.m. at McKinley. Konawaena will play Big Island Interscholastic Federation-foe Hawaii Prep in the 7 p.m. state championship match.

It will be the third time that the Wildcats and Ka Makani have played this season. Konawaena won the regular-season meeting, while HPA won when the teams met in the BIIF tournament final last week.

"It's a rubber match coming up," said Keawekane, who coaches players from both squads on his club team. "I know a lot of the girls on HPA. They know what we do and how we play and we know what they do, so it's going to be a lot of fun."