After swinging away 95 times in the state championship volleyball match, there was one question that everybody asked Sarah Palmer.

How was her arm?

"Everybody keeps asking," Palmer said one day after burying 34 kills in Hawai'i Baptist's win over Word of Life in Saturday's Division II state volleyball championship. "It's perfectly fine."

The top-seeded Eagles retained their state title with a 26-28, 25-19, 25-27, 25-21, 15-13 victory over Word of Life in a marathon match that lasted 2 hours and 30 minutes. Palmer had 34 kills in 95 attempts with nine hitting errors and was named the tournament's most outstanding player.

"I was just doing it for the team," Palmer said. "I wanted to win that second championship and get it over with because I was tired and exhausted."

The Hawai'i Baptist coaches asked Palmer, a junior, how she was feeling during the match.

"When we needed a kill, needed to get a rally going, she was the one starting it," Hawai'i Baptist coach Myles Shioji said. "She hung in there, kept the team alive. Those 34 kills were nice."

The Eagles (19-2) were down two sets to one going into the fourth and trailed 12-10 in the fifth. Palmer's last two kills broke a 13-13 tie in the fifth to end the match.

"We were telling each other we had to stay focused, play hard, play as a team and for each other, and play for seniors in their last match," Palmer said. "We wanted to make them proud."

Palmer's kills carried the team, and her emphatic cheers after each kill and her defense were just as important. She finished with 17 digs, second on the team behind libero Kelly Chang's tremendous 35-dig performance.

"Her serve-receive and digging, that's what really turned it around," Shioji said. "She willed the team."

Shioji started coaching Palmer on Hawai'i Baptist's intermediate team and this was their fifth year together.

"We've had no problems, she's always at practice, never heard a complaint from her," Shioji said. "She's the kind of athlete every coach dreams of in terms of attitude and hard work. She's talented, but her attitude and work ethic is what makes the talent shine."

Shioji said Palmer's progression each year has been helped by year-round club play and involvement with the USA Volleyball High Performance program. She has made a verbal commitment to play college volleyball at Texas, where she's being looked as a setter or libero.

"USA Volleyball gives a different look at each position," Palmer said. "I'm a libero up there and work on different parts of volleyball. I pass more and work on serve-receive. Here, I'm focused on the basic all-around."

Fortunately for the Eagles, Palmer's all-around play has meant another championship.

"She's done a great job leading the team in matches, in practices, in the way she practices," Shioji said. "She's a great example for the rest of the girls."