Ex-Island volleyball star to play at UCSB
By Dennis Anderson
Advertiser Staff Writer
Beating hundreds of recruiters to the punch, Honolulu-born volleyball virtuoso Ashley Dutro has committed to play for University of California-Santa Barbara next fall.
Dutro was Calhisports.com's first-team all-state setter in California last season for Division I champion St. Francis High of Mountain View, 38 miles southeast of San Francisco.
Her family moved to California just before Ashley was to begin her sophomore year at Punahou, partly because her mother, Jessica, was offered a job in the Stanford University comptroller's office, and partly to enable Ashley to obtain greater exposure and competition in volleyball. Dutro was born at Kapi'olani Hospital and had lived her entire life on O'ahu.
In California, she has helped St. Francis win three consecutive state championships.
Volleyball Magazine, considered the nation's top media authority on the sport, called St. Francis "the Greatest Team Ever" six months before the 2002 season began.
Dutro had 28 assists and two aces as St. Francis defeated Long Beach Wilson 16-14, 15-9, 15-13 for the state title and Dutro was named to the All-Championship Team. (St. Francis is coached by two-time U.S. Olympian Kim Oden.)
Dutro is the cousin of Iolani senior Kanoe Kamana'o, the 2001 Hawai'i High School Player of the Year and a USA Junior National Team member, who has signed with Hawai'i.
Recruiters can begin to phone and visit high school prospects like Dutro on June 1, and some probably still will, but she has attempted to head them off by announcing firmly that UCSB is her college of choice.
Before June 1 of their junior year, colleges are only allowed to write to prospects once a week. Dutro has received mail weekly from Southern California, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Miami, Texas, Florida State and LSU, among others, said her father, Henry Dutro.
He said that Ashley hopes to return to Hawai'i after next volleyball season.
"She wants to run track for Punahou and graduate with her friends," he said.
"We really miss the warm weather," Dutro said.
MUSICAL WRESTLING
• Coach makes CD: Kim Shimamoto can get down and sweaty with the wrestlers she coaches on the Punahou girls team, but she cleans up really nice, too.
Shimamoto, 21, has been chosen by her peers the past two seasons as Interscholastic League of Honolulu girls wrestling Coach of the Year.
She will release her first CD, "Bridges," a collection of contemporary songs that includes a new composition by Herb Ohta and a duet she sings with the composer Justin Young called "Sooner with Goodbye."
Shimamoto is a 1999 Punahou graduate and was runner-up in the 1999 Brown Bags to Stardom competition.
Combining seemingly incongruous careers, she was ranked No. 8 in the nation at 138 pounds by USA Wrestling before she took a break to develop her professional singing career.
She plans to return to competition next year with the Rainbow Wahine club team.
