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Kalani Takase | ScoringLiveApril 5, 2022, 6:07am
Mon, Apr 4, 2022 @ Leilehua [ 6:00 pm ]
WAHIAWA — Fati Seei-Tofi surprised even his own coach with his prolific performance Monday night.
The senior outside hitter put down a match-high 22 kills to lead visiting Pearl City to a four-set win over Leilehua in an Oahu Interscholastic Association boys volleyball match at Paul T. Kobayashi Gymnasium. The set scores were 25-11, 25-13, 23-25 and 25-11.
Seei-Tofi, a 6-foot senior outside hitter, was steady throughout the match, but was especially efficient in the fourth set, when he recorded seven kills — several of them in emphatic fashion.
"He had twenty-two? I'm impressed," Pearl City coach Sean Chang remarked. "That's a good game for him."
As productive as Seei-Tofi was from the left side, the Chargers made a living at the service line. They tallied 18 aces — seven of them in the opening set alone — against 12 service errors.
"I think that did a great job of starting our momentum and it just helped our energy to get up in the energy and fight hard for the whole night."
Setter Christian Ronquillo, who finished with 35 assists, had a half-dozen aces as well as five kills. Ronquillo served up five of his team's seven aces in set 1. His second ace gave Pearl City a 7-1 lead. Later in the set, it went up 15-6 after another ace by Tylus Williams.
The Chargers closed out set 1 with a 10-2 run that culminated with a Keith Patacsil ace on set point.
Set 2 was more of the same as they used a 9-4 run that included two kills apiece by Seei-Tofi and middle Sebastian Buell-Galo to take a 10-4 lead. Leilehua got to within 12-8 after a kill by Ghreysen Scully in the middle, but Pearl City answered with an 11-2 run to separate and eventually pull away.
The third set, however, was a different story; it featured nine ties, but just two lead changes.
The Mules went on a 5-0 run to turn a 13-10 deficit into a 15-13 advantage. Middle blocker Olosega Jennings ignited the mini-Mules' run with a kill off a quick set from Hermes Weilbacher and then won a joust at the net on the very next point.
Chang said that the 6-foot-2 Jennings, who came off the bench late in set 2, changed the complexion of the match with his reach at the net.
"Yeah, so he put up a big block so we told our hitters to just stop hitting down the middle and to work their shots around him," Chang explained.
Pearl City pulled even at 22-all with a kill by Seei-Tofi, assisted by Ronquillo, but Christian Johansen put Leilehua ahead for good with his kill from the left side. An attack error by the Chargers — one of nine they had in set 3 — set-up game point for the Mules, who hung on to win it, 25-23.
But the fourth set was all Pearl City.
Seei-Tofi set the tone with his thunderous slam down the line for the first point of the set. An ace by Keahi Kaneakua gave his team an early 4-0 lead; it stretched to 11-2 with his roll shot from the back row that found the floor. Later in the set, Kaneakua notched back-to-back kills from the left side before an ace by Patacsil made the score 16-6.
Another Kaneakua ace gave the Chargers a 22-9 lead in set 4, which eventually came to an end with a Ronquillo ace.
"We played well and then we had a little bit of a letdown in the third set and then we picked it back up again," said Chang, whose team had not dropped a set since March 23, when it lost to Nanakuli in four sets.
He felt that the third set of Monday night's match provided a bit of a opportunity for his players to refocus for the final week-plus of the 10-game regular season.
"I think it just showed us that we can be complacent and that if we don't play our best, so we gotta be at our best," Chang expressed.
Chang lauded the effort of senior libero Tylus Williams, who made both the routine plays and the more-spectacular ones as well.
"We rely on Tylus a lot," he said. "In fact, our big focus for tonight's game was first touch, so passing and digging, getting up something that our setter can set and then setting that up for our hitters to hit."
Seei-Tofi credited Ronquillo for his ability to better most balls for the hitters, himself included.
"He actually does pretty well, even out-of-system balls he does his best to get it to me when he needs to and yeah, he knows where to put the ball most of the time," Seei-Tofi said.
Kaneakua had eight kills and five aces, Buell-Galo chipped in with five kills and Williams contributed three aces and two kills in the win.
While Chang was impressed with Seei-Tofi's night, he acknowledged that he would like to see less of a reliance on him going forward.
"We definitely don't want to have to rely on him all the time," he said. "We want to try and spread out our offense a little more, because I mean, for one guy that's too many swings in a season, so we're trying to spread out our offense a lot more."
Johansen finished with a team-high 12 kills for the Mules, who fell to 4-3 in the OIA Division I West standings.
The Division II-Chargers improved to 5-2 with their third straight victory and fifth in their last six games.
Both teams have three matches left in the regular season and next play on Wednesday at 6 p.m. Pearl City will host Aiea (3-4), while Leilehua will visit Radford (3-5).
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