Colorado setter impressive as scholar, athlete

By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer

If the University of Hawai'i is wise, today's Hawaiian Airlines Wahine Volleyball Classic game plan will not include out-smarting Colorado's setter.

She backed up her academic reputation by scoring 35 of 36 on the ACT Test. The past two years, Gower has earned the highest GPA in her chemical engineering class. She has a 3.94 collegiate GPA, including two perfect fall semesters.

"Maintaining nearly a 4.0 is unheard of," one of Gower's professors insisted. "It's pretty much incomprehensible."

Aiu, who grew up in Kapa'a and graduated from Kamehameha Schools, dreams of Gower going into space. "I'd love her to do that, so I could say I coached an astronaut," Aiu says. "She has the ability. She's an athlete with the brains and strength to fill the role."

Gower's dreams go beyond the final frontier. She went to space camp as a kid and found it "interesting," but majoring in chemical engineering is purely a way to "open doors" to interests she may pursue in the future. She's pondering medical school, or maybe an MBA. She enjoyed her summer working for Chevron in petroleum engineering. Her brother is going to law school. She figures that's worth checking out.

But Gower is decidedly dedicated to life outside the library as well. She affirmed her high school volleyball credentials, created in the endless hours of repetition the Chicago-area Sports Performance program demands, by earning all-region setting honors the past two seasons. As a freshman, she hit and she's still averaging two kills a game, with a CU-high eight triple-doubles.

"I put more time into school," says Gower, whose father is a civil engineer, "but I put equal effort into school and volleyball. I don't see a point in doing something if you're not going to do it your best."

Next to her academic achievements, volleyball might seem inconsequential. But it's the reason she rolled into Boulder, bypassing schools that offered purely scholastic pursuits. She found the volleyball program, which has gone to the past 10 NCAA Tournaments, "a little more laid back ... somewhere where you work hard and have fun."

It was the ideal complement to a highly ranked engineering school. "Colorado was the best fit overall," Gower says. "I wanted to go somewhere I'd be happy if I got hurt and couldn't play volleyball anymore."

"Happiness" this semester is classes in numerical methods, bio-chemistry and polymer engineering ("when a whole bunch of molecules latch on to each other"), with a senior lab and seminar, interspersed by volleyball and study groups. Gower's day starts at 8 a.m. and ends anywhere from 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Living for the moment is an 18-hour-a-day odyssey.

"She's a phenomenal kid," says Aiu, who has the rare pleasure of fielding calls from professors who gush, not grumble. "I've known a lot of really smart people in my time here who didn't have to study hard. And I've met a lot who did well because they did study hard. Elizabeth does both those things. She has amazing intelligence and she works really hard ... and she has a complete life outside school."