Granato leads Punahou past Iolani in ILH girls volleyball

Punahou outside hitter McKenna Granato attempts to put the ball past Iolani blockers Sara Watanabe (11) and Emily Sunada (16). Kristen Izumigawa | Special to SL

After suffering its first loss of the 2013 season just three days prior, the Punahou girls volleyball team rebounded Tuesday night with a three-set win over visiting Iolani before a crowd of about 200 fans at Hemmeter Fieldhouse in an Interscholastic League of Honolulu match. The scores were 25-22, 24-26 and 25-20.

McKenna Granato put down a match-high 16 kills to help the Buffanblu improve to 3-1 in the ILH Division I standings. With the loss, the Raiders fell to 3-1. Both teams are one game behind league leader Kamehameha, which improved to 4-0 with a sweep of Mid-Pacific Tuesday.

"I think it was good for us to kind of get a feel and get some confidence back after that, but there's still a lot of stuff for us to work on," said Granato, who had seven kills in the first set.

Punahou interim coach Tanya Fuamatu-Anderson was happy to see her team rebound from the straight-set loss to the Warriors Saturday.

"It was nice to get a win and kind of get that monkey off our backs," said Fuamatu-Anderson, who had plenty of praise for Granato, a junior outside hitter. "She was awesome. We're going to count on her and we're going to need for her to carry a lot of the load for us this year and she's ready for it."

Iolani held a 19-18 lead in the opening set, but Punahou used a 5-0 run to take a 23-19 lead. The Buffanblu were whistled for a back row attack on the ensuing point, but the Raiders committed back-to-back errors to close out game one in Punahou's favor, 25-22.

The Raiders rallied from a 13-11 deficit in game two with a 9-2 run to pull ahead 20-15. The Buffanblu tied it at 23 on an Iolani service error and took a brief lead on Granato's sixth kill of the second set. However, following a timeout by Raiders' coach Kainoa Obrey, his team scored three straight points — capped by a kill by Tatiana Calimpong-Burke — to win game two, 26-24.

Punahou jumped out to a 6-3 lead in the third set and eventually increased its lead to 14-7 following a 5-0 run. Iolani answered with a 9-5 run to pull within 19-16, but the Buffanblu separated with three straight points and closed out the match on a Granato cross-court kill, 25-20.

"We just needed to make a couple adjustments out of our middle and we just needed to minimize our mental errors — we were making so many errors — and I think that's what caused the separation in the third game, so kudos to our kids that were able to concentrate a little bit better (in game three) and keep the errors at the minimum," Fuamatu-Anderson said.

Iolani coach Keoni Obrey said his team probably let down its guard against the two-time state champion Buffanblu after winning game two.

"We're young, so we might have surprised ourselves a little bit winning game two and we came out a little bit flat in game three," Obrey said. "That didn't quite help us, but you can't come out flat against a team like Punahou or anybody in our league."

Amnesty Dawson had seven kills — including five in game three — with an ace and one block, Moea Kekauoha put down six kills with an ace and Tatiana Calimpong-Burke and Emily Sunada added five kills apiece for the Raiders. Calimpong-Burke also had two aces and was in on four blocks. Iolani committed 31 errors for the match.

"Our kids played well, they came out, we had a strategy — a plan that I thought we executed very well," Obrey said. "Punahou is a good quality team, they've got arms across the net so in the long run, over the course of a three-set match, unfortunately our arms weren't able to match up with their arms, especially in that third set."

Remo Gaogao had seven kills and three blocks and Mariah Rigg added five kills with three blocks for the Buffanblu.

Both teams return to ILH action Saturday when Punahou visits Maryknoll and Iolani hosts Kamehameha. The Buffanblu and Raiders meet again on Oct. 1.

Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].