Willoughby has come a long way

By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i associate coach Charlie Wade vividly recalls his first trip to Napoleonville, La., in the spring of 1999. From New Orleans, he drove over the bayou bridges and through the cane fields to watch Kim Willoughby play volleyball.

Kim Willoughby used wondrous skills and a strong support group to become a top volleyball player and fine person. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Turns out, Wade would have gone to the end of the earth to find Willoughby. Those who loved her in Louisiana looked to the end of the earth, as they knew it, to help her.

Wade went to coach Sandy Fussell's for dinner that night. Long after the Cajun food was gone, Fussell started to talk and the room full of faculty and friends suddenly went silent except for her drawl.

"She said, 'We've been praying you would come down here,' " Wade recalled. "They knew about Hawai'i volleyball and they wanted Kim to go away."

Napoleonville is a tiny (pop. 802) village with a wonderful, ethnically diverse high school as respected for its academics as its athletics. The people are warm and genuine and wanted only the best for the finest female athlete in their lifetime.

They knew that meant letting her go, even if she had to go 4,154 miles and especially if it meant sending her across an ocean. Willoughby had lived through a lot, with very little, by the time she turned 18. Every year her life only grew rockier.

"A lot of teenage kids would have said the heck with it, life is not fair," Fussell says. "I think Kim realized a lot of people were caring about her and willing to help her. Fortunately, she accepted that and was able to move on."

The Willoughby children fought through their grief by growing closer. The community took them in and helped them break free.

"I don't think it was a risk for Kim to go so far away," said Fussell, whom Kim calls her second mother. "I never told her this, but she understood it, she knew what I knew and that was that she needed to get away. She needed to go some place where distance was a factor.

"It sounds real harsh to say she needed to go far enough way where she can't come back, but she needed it."

To this day, Willoughby admits in a heartbeat that there was too much heartbreak in Napoleonville, and temptation. She characterizes her younger days as a time when even she didn't like herself. She fought often, in school or on the basketball courts, where she went when she was kicked out of school.

She switched middle schools after sixth grade and "serious" sports and students brought a new perspective. Ultimately, Willoughby would surround herself with "motivated" friends and become a bayou legend in volleyball, basketball and track.

By the time she found Fussell, Willoughby was far too gifted to be coached, but still in dire need of direction. Assumption High School provided it, and still does. So, now, does Hawai'i.

It is so far away she knows she has to deal with her problems without leaning on the crutches she left behind. Yet the gracious spirit Willoughby feels here is so similar to her tiny village she says, "I still feel like I'm at home, I just don't have my family with me."

"People here are much like people in the South," Shoji says. "They really don't care where you came from. If we were recruiting Kim, then we were family already."

Willoughby has staggered here at times because old habits are hard to break, but she has again surrounded herself with positive influences, particularly her teammates.

There has never been a doubt about her talent. More than one coach calls her "the next great U.S. player." Wade believes she could be the best in the world.

He remembers Arizona coach Dave Rubio turning to him while he watched Willoughby at her first "big-time" club tournament and wondering enviously who coached her. Wade's answer: "God. Nobody can take credit for teaching her."

It is not just her lethal armswing and soaring vertical that have kept her in the top two in kills nationally for three years. Willoughby came to Assumption and Manoa with innate volleyball instincts. Fussell was in awe and Shoji stunned.

"There was no reason for her to be this good," says Shoji, who recalls wildly high-fiving Wade as they backed out of Fussell's driveway after Willoughby committed. "She has an almost uncanny sense of the game — where to be, what's going to happen. She calls out things before they happen. She's one of the most aware persons I've ever coached.

"I

Willoughby brings the entire jaw-dropping package, with authority. Startlingly quick, shockingly intuitive and almost ballistic in her approach to the game, she begs for the ball from the first point to the last. If it's close, she just gives UH setter Kanoe Kamana'o "the look."

And pity the poor fool who blocks her. Willoughby retaliates with a vengeance that truly frightens people. She is incredibly focused, passionate, rarely has even a bad game and lights up a volleyball court like few in the world.

"She's just different than most women that play," says Mick Haley, USC and former U.S. Olympic coach. "She's physical and explosive, yet she gives you that smile that melts you.

"It's easy to root for somebody like that. Even though she beats you, you still enjoy watching."

Willoughby's future beyond the 2003 final four is seemingly etched in the Olympic gold, silver and bronze of her dreams. Professional contracts worth anywhere from $15,000 to six figures should be close behind.

It is far from Napoleonville, though she admits her heart will always be in the bayou. She is a survivor with a knack for finding people to protect her — sometimes from herself — and no fear of hard work, or anything else. Nothing has come easily. Except, possibly, Hawai'i.

It was love at first sight for Willoughby and Napoleonville, and Wade, Shoji and — ultimately — a volleyball-mad state. It has been four years of near-wedded bliss.

Willoughby promises to be back, hopefully after the Athens Games, to finish her degree. It was a promise she made to her mother, now able to walk again, and fish.

"My mom always taught us you do everything for yourself, then no one can take it away," Kim says. "If I get a degree, no one can take it away. Then I'll be a professional athlete.

"I want to get my mom into a place where she can be in awe all the time. If she lived here, she could be happy every day of her life and not worry about me at all. That's something that motivates me."

So do children. Fussell saw that from the beginning. "She just has this knack, this gift," she says. "I hope she uses it to teach young children. It's pretty special."

Willoughby's future will involve kids, somehow, some way, some day. She has a lifetime of experiences to teach.

"I want to show them you can start out on the wrong side, do everything wrong and you can always turn it around and make it positive," she says. "I lived it, I went through it myself. It's why I love being around kids so much, to show them and always make sure they have that positive impact in their life."

Then the woman who has shattered so many volleyball records, to say nothing of setting the pace for simple survival, remembered her personal punch line.

"You have to make yourself better," she said. "No one else."

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8043