Mililani's Hope Carter sets a ball against Aiea. Carter finished with 6 kills, 6 aces, 13 assists, and 25 digs in the Trojans' win. Greg Yamamoto | SL

Purchase image 1 of 1

AIEA — Val Crabbe expected a battle when her undefeated Mililani girls volleyball team took the court against always-tough Aiea. Fortunately for Crabbe, she had Hope on her side.

Hope Carter did a little bit of everything Tuesday night. The junior setter had 25 digs, 13 assists and six aces — all match-high marks — and added six kills for good measure to power Mililani to a 25-20, 26-24 win over host Aiea before a crowd of about 300 fans.

The win pushed the Trojans to 7-0 in the Western Division of the Oahu Interscholastic Association, while Na Alii dropped their second straight match to fall to 4-2.

"We knew they were going to be good," Crabbe said of Aiea, which was coming off a three-set loss at Pearl City Thursday night. "Even though they lost to Pearl City, I think they just had a bad day, but last year when we played Pearl City we had a bad day. Pearl City only had two wins last year — (against) Waialua and us — so when I saw that Pearl City beat (Aiea), I just thought that they had a game like what we had last year, so I knew that they were going to be tough."

Mililani had to rally in both sets Tuesday night. It trailed 18-14 in game one and 24-23 in game two before pulling it out.

"They sure gave us a run for our money, but everyone was playing their role, everyone dug deep, we tried not to let the crowd get to us and we seemed to pull through," Carter said.

The Trojans used a 7-0 run in game one to turn the four-point deficit into a 21-18 lead on Ashley Pawlak's slam down from the left side after the Na Alii block was late to arrive.

Aiea scored the next two points to get within a point, but Mililani scored the final four points — on an Aiea hitting error, followed by back-to-back Pawlak aces and finally Kahea Aea's game-ending kill — to take the opening set.

"Everyone found that will to keep pushing and not to let up because we know that if we play our own game, everything would fall together, so that's pretty much what we did," Carter said.

Pawlak, a junior outside hitter, had five kills in the set and totaled eight in the match.

The Trojans took a 12-7 lead in game two following a 10-1 run that culminated with four consecutive aces by Carter. As a team, they had 11 aces in all.

"We work a lot on serving," Crabbe said. "It's the only thing we can control, so we need to control it."

However, Aiea answered with an 8-2 run — which included three Mililani hitting errors — to pull ahead at 15-14.

The Trojans went up 19-16 before Na Alii came back to tie with three straight points before Carter reclaimed the lead for her team with a one-handed backward dink.

"I felt like we needed to change it up," Carter said. "Just setting out to the pins, pin to pin, they kind of picked up on that and their middle stayed right up on our middle, so we needed to put a change in."

There were tied at 21 and 23. Kyra Kaloi's kill gave Aiea a 24-23 lead and a look at game point, however, an Aiea hitting error tied it once again. Carter put Mililani ahead, 25-24, with her two-handed push to the back left corner and closed out the match with her last of five aces in the set.

Carter was a frequent target on Na Alii serves, which hasn't been typical of her role this season.

"I usually don't pass as much because I'm usually setting, but coach Val wanted to give them a new look so she just pulled me back to pass so I didn't expect them to serve me that much," Carter said.

Crabbe said the decision to include Carter in the serve-receive rotation was made with the idea of building depth for the upcoming playoffs.

"We're trying to do different things, because we have the personnel to do different things, so we have to work at it so that when we try to do it in a game it doesn't look really like people are totally freaking out," Crabbe said.

Nina Torio and Mikayla Nedorolik added 10 digs apiece for Mililani. Torio also had seven assists and an ace.

Christina Betham finished with a team-high five kills for Aiea. Kaloi had four kills, six digs, two aces and an assists. Kamalani Cachola posted 16 digs, nine assists and a kill and Trinity Atuatasi pitched in 10 digs, one kill, one assist and an ace in the loss.

The Trojans, who have yet to drop a set this season, wrap up the regular season against Radford Friday and matches against Waialua and Nanakuli next week.

Na Alii, who have four matches remaining, will visit Kapolei Thursday.