DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Hawaii's Kim Willoughby came out of nowhere to be one of the nation's best volleyball players.
Home cookin' NAPOLEONVILLE, La. >> You would not find Kim Willoughby's hometown unless you were really looking for it. Napoleonville's residents call it a village, and that's what it feels like.
Kim Willoughby is at home
for Hawaii’s run at a national titleBy Grace Wen
gwen@starbulletin.comIt's about 75 miles from New Orleans and to get there, you have to know exactly where to turn to find all four of the two-lane roads you need to take after getting off Interstate 10. Go over the Sunshine bridge -- a two-lane suspension of metal bars with barely an inch of space on either side -- then drive 10 miles down a highway surrounded by fields and swamps. And follow the sweet scent of burnt sugar cane.
Hawaii associate head coach Charlie Wade has been to Napoleonville four times and he still can't say exactly how to get there. Sometimes it's hard to know you've been there without driving by it first. There are maybe four streets in all, and most people will warn you not to blink or you'll miss Napoleonville. There is one community bank, a volunteer fire station and about 600 people living within the "village" limits.
It could have been easy to miss Willoughby given Napoleonville's location. Her high school, Assumption, is located a quarter-mile away on Highway 308, a road not found on any map of the area. The sports programs are good, but exposure is limited.
So how did Willoughby rise out of obscurity, out of a community of 20,000 in Assumption Parish, to become a volleyball star thousands of miles away from home?
Hard work and a little luck.
Long before Willoughby was beheading opponents in the Western Athletic Conference and obliterating Hawaii records, she was upholding the Lady Mustangs' rich tradition of volleyball. Assumption High School won 113 straight league matches from 1988 to 2000. The Lady Mustangs have been in every state championship since 1990, winning titles from 1990 to '92, finishing runner-up from 1994 to '96, and closing out the millennium with four more championships from 1997 to 2000. Willoughby lost her freshman year (1996) in the state final, but won the next three after that. Assumption went 44-0 in 1998 with Willoughby as the celestial being.
The trophy case in front of the gym is half volleyball and half football. Both of Willoughby's Gatorade Player of the Year awards are in it. Assumption coach Sandy Fussell has been coaching for more than 21 years and said "without a doubt" Willoughby is the best to come out of Assumption. Some coaches have even told her that the 6-foot junior is possibly the best ever to play high school volleyball in Louisiana, better even than Willoughby's third cousin, Olympian Danielle Scott.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Getting noticed was not an issue for Willoughby. The football coach at Assumption spotted her in middle school and told Fussell to come see. What Fussell saw was a 5-10 athlete with plenty of raw talent.
"Any coach would be a fool not to admit that some players have a God-given talent," Fussell said. "It was there long before we took over. We just refined it a little bit."
Fussell convinced Willoughby to play for a club team, Sugarland, the feeder program in the area that developed a reputation for good coaching and picks up kids when they're "little bitty". By the time Willoughby reached high school, she brought volleyball to another level at Assumption.
The creature born of Southern manners and hospitality always wanted more from her teammates. Fussell remembers one practice when Willoughby purposely didn't give her best.
"She was very demanding of her teammates," Fussell said. "She knew that if there was a drop-off in practice, they would do more conditioning after it. So one particular practice, I just found she was not doing anything at all. I thought something was bothering her. She wasn't herself.
"We definitely ran that day. I asked her, 'Kim, what's the deal?' She said, 'I didn't think everybody was working as hard as they could and I thought we needed to do some running. I knew you'd make us run.' "
Napoleonville's population isn't big enough to qualify as a town, which makes it remarkable that by Willoughby's sophomore year, she was already playing with the U.S. junior national team. Apparently, some tapes that Fussell had sent to an assistant coach at Oklahoma got put in the right hands.
"She was way above the talent of everybody else we played," Fussell said. "A lot of people said she was a woman playing with children, and that very well may have been the case."
Lily Kahumoku agrees, but tells it a little differently.
"I think God was happy the day he made Kim," Kahumoku said. "She's a genetic masterpiece. She is physically so overwhelming that you really can't stop her. When the ball is coming down at you from 10 feet, what are you going to do? It's not only coming high, it's hard. She puts some men to shame."
Willoughby will be the main attraction in the final four this week. Fussell estimates that 75 to 100 people will make the drive to the New Orleans Arena to watch Thursday's semifinal against defending national champion Stanford. Several Assumption booster club members bought their final four tickets in July and others have promised to come out tomorrow to watch Hawaii practice.
A year ago, after Hawaii lost to UCLA in the regional semifinal, Willoughby went to San Diego to claim her All-America certificate and try out for national team coach Toshi Yoshida on a single isolated court. This year, the experience will be unlike any other.
Willoughby will be packing her mother's fresh homemade gumbo and playing in front of more people than there are in all of her home village. She returned there yesterday and was honored during Assumption's fall sports banquet, with teammates Nohea Tano and Margaret Vakasausau by her side.
All times Hawaii time Final Four
When: Thursday, Hawaii (34-1) vs. Stanford (31-4), 2:30 p.m.; Southern California (27-1) vs. Florida (34-2), 4:30 p.m.
Where: New Orleans
TV: ESPN2 (Hawaii-Stanford)
Radio: 1420-AM (Hawaii-Stanford)
Title game: Saturday, 10:30 a.m. (ESPN2)
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