[ WAHINE BASKETBALL ]
RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Hawaii senior guard April Atuaia has shown her toughness for the Rainbow Wahine in playing through injury and a recent suspension.
When the going
gets tough...April Atuaia has battled
through adversity during
her UH career
FEW can question April Atuaia's toughness.
The senior guard for the Rainbow Wahine basketball team had taken plenty of lickings even before she set foot inside the paint for Hawaii. As the younger sister of three brothers who played collegiate football (Mark and Donny at Brigham Young and Alema at Northern State), Atuaia got her fair share of bruises and bumps growing up.
"Never (any mercy), but that's also a plus when you have four older brothers," said Atuaia, the youngest of six children.
Atuaia can thank her brothers for her capacity to handle the pushing and shoving a 5-foot-10 post player often sees. She was coached by her dad, Fatu, in the Police Activities League in the fourth grade and her physical style of play was something Fatu favored.
"I have my own game. My brothers think they're Michael Jordan," Atuaia said. "Maybe (my game resembles) my dad's. It's physical. That's why I'm kind of glad I'm playing the '4' now. Just being out there and banging."
Each early experience helped the Kahuku alumna hone the basketball skills she needed to survive an up-and-down career for UH. She will be the only Hawaii senior honored Saturday when the Wahine play Fresno State. Hawaii plays Nevada tonight at 7 at the Stan Sheriff Center.
"Being here and playing in front of this great crowd, it's just been a great ride," Atuaia said. "I'd take it with all the bumps. I've been through a lot. I'm just glad I was able to come this far with the injuries and school."
Atuaia's accumulation of battle stories started in 2002. A torn anterior cruciate ligament disrupted a promising sophomore season after she was named WAC Freshman of the Year in 2001. She returned to the team less than a month later and played five minutes against the Bulldogs but did not play the rest of the season. Surgery followed in the offseason.
"My ACL surgery made a big difference. It made me realize how much I actually enjoy basketball even though at times it was hard," Atuaia said. "Watching from the sideline was hard. It made me want to come back even more. I just wanted to come back and not to take things for granted."
Atuaia made sure she didn't take things for granted last season. Despite sitting out six months in the offseason and not getting much time to work on her game, Atuaia finished second in scoring (10.6 points per game) on last year's senior-laden team and finished the season with a team-high 317 points. She is fourth on the UH career list for 3-pointers with 95.
At the start of this season, Atuaia needed 335 points to join the 1,000-point club. It was a feasible goal since it meant scoring 12.4 points a game over Hawaii's 27-game regular-season schedule. But unless Atuaia puts up 152 points in Hawaii's final three games, she'll fall short.
Not that it bothers her.
"I gave all I had to offer. Granted, I had my ups and downs with games at certain points," she said. "But I left what I had and I'm almost satisfied. It could have been better this year. But I'm satisfied with where I'm at."
And she's proud of one dubious distinction.
"I'm the only one to not pass the mile (test) my whole career (on the first try). I hold that record. I have to keep tradition," she joked.
ATUAIA'S METTLE was tested a month ago when she was suspended from the team for a violation of team rules. UH coaches, citing privacy rules, have not said what the violation was.
Atuaia missed three games and could have walked away from the team with the Wahine stuck in a losing season. But she struck a deal with coaches and made peace with the consequences of her actions.
Hawaii coach Vince Goo is glad Atuaia opted to return.
"She had a good career. She had a major setback with the knee injury. It took awhile to recover from that. She's been in a lot of ball games for us and done well," Goo said. "She hit a bump in the road a few weeks ago. She got over that very well. ... She's a good scorer and a good athlete. She's come in and done the things she needed to do to get where she's at."
It is Atuaia's toughness that carried her.
Rainbow Wahine associate coach Serenda Valdez said that her most distinct memory of Atuaia doesn't involve swishing a big shot or grabbing a big board. It was right after she tore her ACL.
"She's one of the physically toughest kids that we've had in the program. Even though I saw her walk herself off the court, I didn't think that meant she was all right," Valdez said. "I knew that she's just physically tough. A lot of the other kids have never walked 94 feet after tearing their ACL.
"The toughest thing was that we left her two days later on a road trip. She stayed back to work out and rehab. I called the weight room and I hear she was doing squats three days after tearing her ACL. ... She has very high pain tolerance. That says how strong she is physically as a player. She had to hold her own (with her brothers playing football) and she's not one to let people see her in pain. She doesn't want that."
What Atuaia does want is some time off after completing her career. Four years of being tough has taken its toll on her.
"I need to take some time off. I'll play pick-up every once in awhile," Atuaia said. "As for professional basketball, I don't think I'm going to try. I just want to go day-by-day and see what happens. ... It's time for me to hang up my sneakers, but who knows? Anything might happen."
