Former University of Hawaii volleyball star Kim Willoughby said she can’t immediately pay $2,000 in restitution to a woman she assaulted outside a Honolulu nightclub in 2006 because she’s lost her job with a professional volleyball team in Italy.

Willoughby, 28, appeared in court yesterday morning to be sentenced in the assault case. Circuit Court Judge Karen Ahn placed Willoughby on five years of probation and ordered her to pay $2,027 in medical bills incurred by her victim, Sara Daniel, who was beaten Dec. 16, 2006, in the parking lot of Pipeline Cafe.
Daniel spoke to Willoughby in the hearing, saying, “I cannot put into words the pain I endured physically” because of the assault, which caused her to undergo “major reconstructive surgery” to her face.
Willoughby apologized to Daniel.
“I do regret everything that happened to you,” Willoughby said.
“I really do apologize to you for that night,” she said.
The Italian Olympic Committee announced in April that Willoughby had tested positive for steroid use, a finding that Willoughby disputed outside court yesterday and said will be proved wrong.
“I’m very confident,” she said. “I know I’ve done nothing wrong.”
But her Italian professional team has used the finding to stop paying her, Willoughby said.
“They don’t want to pay me,” she said.
She has other volleyball and basketball contract offers that she said she is “working out right now.”
But in the meantime, she has no money and is tending to her father who has been diagnosed with cancer in Louisiana, said Willoughby’s lawyer, Richard Hoke.
“Right now, she’s out of a job,” Hoke said. “She doesn’t have any income at this point.”
Ahn ordered her to pay the restitution at a rate of at least $50 per month. The judge also said she believed some jail time might be warranted in the case and also felt that Willoughby should perform 250 hours of community service —half in Hawaii and half in Louisiana.
But Hoke pointed out that the terms of the plea agreement reached with prosecutors — and earlier approved by Ahn — did not require jail time or community service.
Prosecutor Sherri Chun told the judge that her office was not seeking jail time or community service by the defendant.