Greg Yamamoto | SL

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In the lexicon of prep coaches, a ‘young' team often translates to inexperience. A squad that might be as eager or ambitious as any contender, sure, but one that is more likely a year or two away from truly competing with those upper-echelon powers.

That's kind of what Hawaii Baptist coach Myles Shioji thought he had going into the 2015 girls volleyball season.

Well, they were that. And then some.

The Eagles used their youth to their advantage that season, when they finished with an overall 13-3 record and took home both the ILH and state Division II titles.

"The underclassmen that year really stepped up," Shioji said in a recent phone interview.

HBA roster was made up of five seniors, four juniors, three sophomores and two freshmen.

"We really only had one senior in our main rotation and we actually had two freshmen who played a lot — Brienna Nishimura and Naiya Fujikawa — and we had Ally (Wada), who was a sophomore that year, Nanea (Lum) and Kailey Young were juniors, so it really was a heavy underclassmen type of year," Shioji explained.

Of course, with youth comes growing pains. In the third match of the ILH season, the Eagles were swept at Iolani II, 25-23 and 25-17.

It proved to be a turning point.

"I think that's when the underclassmen decided to step up and lead," Shioji said of the trio of Young, Lum and Wada. He went on, "They had a meeting with me — I didn't call the meeting with them — so we were on the same wave length. I guess they saw what was going on."

What they saw, collectively, was a team that was void of the leadership that it so desperately required. But they were willing to fill that void.

"They wanted to make a change," Shioji recalled. "But I told them, ‘Okay, but you're going to be held responsible and you're going to be held to a higher standard, too. Now the pressure is on you, now you go and do it.' "

The Eagles responded by winning seven of their next eight matches, including three-set victories against both Le Jardin and University Lab after dropping the opening set.

HBA saw its win streak come to an end in a five-set marathon match against Damien. The set scores were 25-20, 18-25, 13-25, 27-25 and 17-15, in favor of the visiting Monarchs.

It would be the last time the Eagles lost a match that season.

They rebounded a week later in the ILH championship match, this time pulling out a nail-biting five-set thriller of their own over Le Jardin, 23-25, 25-15, 22-25, 27-25 and 15-13.

"Le Jardin is a good team, even though they were young to the spotlight," Shioji recalled with accuracy.

In fact, the Bulldogs had just one senior on their roster that season. The rest of the team was made up of three juniors, seven sophomores and three freshmen.

"They were an up-and-coming team, a well-trained team — coach Lee (Lamb) does a great job there and their club coaches do a really great job," Shioji added. "They had a lot of attackers, they come from multiple spots on the court."

Shioji and the Eagles would see more of Le Jardin later.

As for HBA, after claiming its second straight ILH title, it drew the No. 3 overall seed in the 12-team field for the New City Nissan/HHSAA D2 State Championships a week later.

The Eagles were one of four teams to get a first-round bye and awaited the winner of the Hawaii Prep-Damien game. Shioji anticipated a match-up with the Monarchs — a third meeting between the teams that season — and their then-freshman sensation outside hitter, Shelby Capllonch.

"We were actually concerned going into that state tournament because they put Damien in our quarter (bracket) and they had Shelby and we're not very big, so that concerned us, just one team having a really good player like that," Shioji said.

Capllonch was the go-to hitter for Damien in its win over HBA during the ILH season, but in the lead-up to his team's state-tourney opener Shioji was cautious not to put much of his players' focus on the freshman phenom.

"Was it in the back of our heads? Sure. We also felt that they were going to try and feed Shelby as much as possible — and she was going to get hers, but it was just about the effectiveness of it. Make her take a lot of swings. If they're going to get a point, make them earn it and make her take those three, four swings for one point," Shioji said.

Capllonch got hers — 19 kills — but it came on 58 swings and in a four-set Damien loss. The set scores were 25-23, 25-19, 23-25 and 26-24.

Capllonch hit .172 for the match and recorded 10 digs.

The Eagles got a 37-kill, 14-dig effort from Lum. The junior outside hitter took 83 swings and committed 11 attack errors for a .313 hitting percentage. Sophomore outside Kallie Langford added 15 kills and Young, a junior libero posted 23 digs. Wada, a sophomore setter, recorded 65 assists and nine digs.

HBA's win over the Monarchs set-up a semifinal showdown against Maui Interscholastic League champ and tournament No. 2 seed Seabury Hall. It would be a rematch of a state semi from a year ago, which the Spartans won in a sweep.

As far as the Eagles were concerned, however, there were no demons to exorcise.

"The way we coach our girls is that losses are going to happen, even little losses in matches are going to happen, (but) just move on to the next play," Shioji said. "Obviously we're learning from it and hopefully next time we come across that situation we'll be successful, but it's just about moving on. Volleyball is such an error-prone sport, it's going to happen; no one is perfect."

Shioji's girls would need short memory against the Spartans, who took a tightly-contested opening set off of them, 29-27.

During the break between sets one and two, Shioji did his best to wipe the slate clean.

"We just try to play our type of game. We can only do so much, so it becomes, for us, a lot to do with mental games. As long as we mentally can wash that last error or last point, it's just about coming in and getting the next one, even between sets, like, if we drop the first set, now we gotta go four, if we lost the first two, then we gotta go five," Shioji reiterated.

HBA took sets two and three, 25-20 and 25-23, but Seabury Hall won the fourth set, 25-19, to send it to a deciding fifth set.

Late in the set, a double-block by the Spartans set them up with championship point at 14-11. After a timeout called by Shioji, the Eagles reeled off five straight points, capped by Lum's team-high 22nd kill of the match, to storm back and win it, 16-14.

HBA overcame a combined 44 kills by the Seabury Hall duo of Shayla Hoeft (25 kills, 20 digs) and Amy Ozee (19 kills, 12 digs) to earn its first trip back to the state final since 2009, when the Eagles won their last of three straight D2 state championships.

Standing in the way of their fourth overall title in 2015?

Le Jardin.

The Bulldogs were making their first state tournament appearance and early on in the championship match, it was their youth that showed.

HBA pulled away in the opening set, 25-17, and jumped out to a commanding 22-10 lead in set two. However, Le Jardin went on a 12-1 run to pull ahead, 23-22. The Bulldogs' lead was brief, however, as the Eagles were able to rally to a 25-23 win to go up two sets to none in the best-of-five match.

"I think getting out to a big lead was probably detrimental to us," Shioji reflected. "I think it allowed the girls to just relax too much — mentally relax too much — and then, just like young kids, when things don't go your way it starts snowballing the other way and the momentum is changed and your confidence is down. We started playing with some doubt, or sometimes we were trying to do too much and Le Jardin got hot, (but) luckily we had that lead."

The Eagles went on to take set three, 25-16, to complete the sweep of the Bulldogs.

Lum put down a match-high 18 kills to go with 12 digs. Langford tallied 15 kills and hit .316 for the match, while Wada dished out 37 assists with 14 digs. HBA out-dug Le Jardin 90-74, led by 29 from Young and 17 from Fujikawa. As a team, the Eagles posted nine service aces — four of them by Wada — against just three service errors.

One of the few areas that the Bulldogs won? At the net. They had seven total team blocks to just one for HBA.

"We're not going to out-block a team and that's obvious. We're not really big and teams would probably like to use that as an intimidation thing toward us, but I tell the girls all the time that we're going to walk into gyms and sometimes people might even laugh at you," Shioji said.

"You always have fans of other teams, especially D1 teams, that are like, ‘Hey, I like your little team,' and the girls take offense to it, but I'm like, ‘Thanks for even recognizing that we're here.' "

He went on, "So for us to compete, we have to serve accurately, we have change up the pace of our attacks, mix it up, we have to attack smartly off the net and our whole goal for blocking is to slow down balls so that we can dig it and turn it around the other way."

The Bulldogs were limited to a .077 hitting percentage. Shioji cautioned that their nine errors in serve-receive and 18 attack errors that night were not indicative of how good of a team they truly were.

"Maybe a little bit of nerves on their end," he said.

Shioji's opinion proved to be a matter of fact in the not-so-distant future: Le Jardin went on to win back-to-back D2 state championships in 2016 and 2017 — beating HBA in the title match both times.

But 2015 was the year of the Eagles and the fruits of their labor was the program's first state crown in six seasons.

"I was happy for the kids, all the kids, seniors included. I was just happy for all of them," Shioji said.

Wada was selected as the Most Outstanding Player of the state tournament. She was joined on the All-Tournament team by Lum, Langford and Young.

"I think those All-Tournament's are just a byproduct of how you finish (as a team). Obviously there are some players that play really well, but their team doesn't do well, but I'm happy that those girls who took over the leadership of the team, they played well and were recognized for that during the state tournament, so that was good to see," Shioji said.

Although the Eagles qualified for the state tournament in each season between state championships in 2009 and 2015, they were met with heartbreak each time. They were bounced in the tournament semifinals three times — going on to finish third each time — and went two-and-out in back-to-back years in 2012 and 2013.

Shioji firmly believes that those hardships provided were a necessary part of his team's long-term development.

"I think parents now try to shelter their kids from disappointment, or what they view as something negative, but I think that's what kids need. They need to experience things like that to grow," he said.

Shioji offered a memory of his own youth, when he was a seldom-used underclassmen on the HBA boys volleyball team.

"I played volleyball in high school and I remember going home and being angry and my mom was like, ‘Why are you angry? What's wrong with you?,' and I told her that ‘Coach doesn't like me, he doesn't play me,' and what I remember her telling me is, ‘What did you do to deserve to play?' "

Shioji added, "Kids gotta understand that sometimes someone is better than you, or the cards may not fall in your favor at that time, but it's not gonna always be like that. They have to learn that lesson of how to deal with adversity. When I look back at (the 2015 season), to deal with adversity and get to what our goal is every year (win a state championship), is something to really be proud about."