Leighland Tagawa | Special to SL

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KAILUA — The Governors just keep on rolling.

Sariyah Kahakai put down eight kills and had two aces to help Farrington to a sweep of host Kalaheo in the regular-season finale for both teams at Peter Smith Court Wednesday night. The scores were 25-21 and 25-20.

Farrington (9-2) clinched the Eastern Division's third seed with the win and will be riding a nine-match win streak when it faces West sixth-seeded Pearl City in next Wednesday's first round of the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division I tournament.

Kalaheo (8-3) will have to settle for the fourth seed out of the East and will meet West fifth-seeded Campbell in a first-round match.

"Right now, this win great for us because earlier in the season we weren't playing very well, so I love our mental mindset right now," said second-year coach Barney Choy, who guided the Govs to a D2 league crown last year. "We're doing really well with the effort, taking care of the the little things, so we're ascending — but this was huge — we wanted this."

The loss halted a seven-match win streak for the Mustangs, who had not lost in nearly a month and dropped just two sets during that stretch coming into Wednesday's match.

Farrington got its eighth sweep of the season without its best player in the lineup in 5-foot-10 senior opposite Moli Heimuli.

"Moli was sick today and wasn't with us, so I told these girls they had to dig deep because she's a spiritual leader for us," Choy said. "They responded and stepped up on their end. It was incredible. Everybody showed up."

The Mustangs couldn't hold on to an early three-point lead in the opening set and saw the Govs pull even at 11 on Violet Rae Williams' service ace to cap a 6-2 run.

Syenna Masaki's kill helped the Kalaheo regain the lead at 17-16, but Kahanu put down back-to-back shots from the left side followed by consecutive Kalaheo hitting errors put the visitors ahead, 20-17. Setter Chasity Wong closed out game 1 at 25-21, with her dink shot.

Farrington use an 11-3 run to jump out to a 13-7 lead in game 2, but Kalaheo pulled two points at 15-13 to force a timeout by Choy.

"Coach just said to finish the game and make sure we have a lot of energy on the court because when we have energy on the court, we have a lot of momentum," Kahakai said.

The Govs responded out of the timeout by scoring eight of the next 10 points to separate to 23-16.

Kalaheo fended off a pair of match points with a Samantha Pollard kill and a ace by Kealeui Lopes, but Kahakai finished it off with a kill off the block and out.

Farrington found success behind the service line, where it recorded eight aces against four errors. Six of its aces — and none of its service errors — came in the second set.

"In practice we're just working on serving tough and making sure that our serves were in and over the net," Kahakai said.

The practice paid off. Kalaheo coach Roberta Downey said it was the difference in the match.

"Whether it was serve-receive or defense, we just hurt ourselves on passing," Downey said. "I think everything else worked fine, (but) we just couldn't pass. We couldn't pass and we couldn't block."

Choy agreed with his counterpart's assessment.

"We emphasized that in practice all week," Choy said. "We felt it was going to come down to that and I think she's absolutely right: we took care of the ball pretty good, we got them out of rhythm by serving tough and the kids were spot on with their serving."

Kahakai, 5-foot-3 sophomore hitter, had five kills of her game-high eight in the second set.

"The kid is a rock, she's steady, solid, very tough mentally, obviously tough physically," Choy said of Kahakai. "She's awesome."

Dayna Kahanu notched five kills, including four in game 1, and an ace. Libero Shaniah Paleafei chipped in with two aces for the Govs.

Masaki had seven kills with two aces and Giuliana Irvine added six kills to lead Kalaheo, which saw its seven-match win streak snapped.

East sixth-seeded Kailua will play West No. 3 Aiea and West fourth-seeded Leilehua will face East No. 5 Kalani in other first-round matches Wednesday. The top six teams from the OIA tournament will qualify for the D1 state tournament.