Kamehameha landed a spot in its sixth straight girls volleyball state championship match last night, sweeping past Kamehameha-Maui 25-20, 25-19, 25-19 before a semifinal crowd of about 600 at the O'ahu campus' Kekuhaupi'o Gym.

The three-time defending state champ and No. 1 seed Warriors improved to 19-2 in the regular and postseason and will face Punahou (19-3) in tonight's all-Interscholastic League of Hono-lulu title match at the Stan Sheriff Center.

First serve is set for 8 o'clock, and the match will be televised live statewide on OC16.

Kamehameha-Maui fell to 14-1 and will play O'ahu Interscholastic Association champion Kahuku (17-1) for third place at 4:30 p.m.

"It's amazing to be thinking of going back to the championship match," said Warriors senior setter Caitlin Andrade, one of only two returning starters from last year's team. "We're gonna be ready, we just have to stay focused."

Kamehameha stumbled a bit in the middle of its quarterfinal sweep over Farrington on Thursday, trailing 23-21 before rallying to win 26-24. But the Warriors were in control almost from start to finish last night.

Talia Jardin's kill broke a 4-4 tie and gave Kamehameha the lead for good, and the Warriors eventually went up 16-10. Kamehameha-Maui closed it to 23-20 after Ginger Long's kill, but an error resulted in a sideout and Whitney Viveiros ended it with a kill through the block.

The Warriors then jumped to a 7-2 lead in the second set and opened it to 18-10. Kamehameha-Maui got as close as 23-19 after a kill by Teilissa Tua, but Viveiros answered with a kill and it ended with a Kamehameha-Maui kill attempt that went into the net.

"They played a lot smarter than we did," Kamehameha-Maui coach Bala Spencer said. "We made so many errors, and you can't win when you do that."

The third set was tied at 13-13 before Kamehameha-O'ahu capitalized on a series of errors to forge a 10-0 run with Alex Akana serving. The run finally ended on an error, and two net violations closed it to 23-17, but a Kamehameha-Maui error set up match point. A kill by Cymbree DeCosta and a Kamehameha error made it 24-19, but a serve into the net ended it.

"Alex got hot and served tough, and we played good defense," Warriors coach Chris Blake said. "It was a great team win, everybody contributed."

Spencer and Andrade cited the play of Andrade, who had 33 assists in quarterbacking a balanced attack.

"She's such a good setter, she put us in a lot of one-on-one (blocking) situations," Spencer said. "They out-quicked us, out-paced us. We're not used to that in the (Maui Interscholastic League)."

Kamehameha-Maui had outblocked Moanalua 19-4 in Thursday's five-set quarterfinal win but managed only five blocks last night.

"I tried to spread it around, to work the middles first and then push it out to the pins," Andrade said. "We learned from watching their match (Thursday), and we played as a team."

Said Blake: "Cait did a great job distributing the ball. I thought today we came out harder and we did a good job executing the game plan."

Viveiros had 11 kills and Akana added eight kills to lead Kamehameha. Ginger Long led Kamehameha-Maui with eight kills and Kaulana Ane added seven kills.

Kamehameha-Maui was the first MIL team to advance to the semifinals since Seabury Hall in 2002.

CONSOLATION

Moanalua defeated Farrington 25-22, 25-14 in a consolation bracket match.

Na Menehune will play Mililani, a 25-22, 18-25, 15-11 winner over Waiakea, for fifth place at 1:30 p.m. today.

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