From left, Kansas' Cassie Wait (5), Ainise Havili (11), Madison Rigdon, Kelsie Payne (8) and Janae Hall celebrate an ace serve by teammate Tiana Dockery during the Jayhawks' NCAA volleyball tournament first round match against Furman on Thursday evening at the Horejsi Center. The Jayhawks swept the Paladins in three sets and will face the Missouri Tigers in the second round of the tournament. The first serve is set for 6:30 p.m. at the Horejsi Center

As Kansas Athletics bestows one honor upon her after another, former KU volleyball star Ainise Havili has retained her setter’s mentality.

When the program wanted to retire her jersey last year, she immediately suggested that she could share her ceremony with her old right-side hitter Kelsie Payne, as their coach Ray Bechard previously told the Journal-World.

And after KU announced her induction into the Kansas Athletics Hall of Fame, she said she was thankful but expressed particular excitement for the opportunity to go in alongside the rest of the 2015 Final Four volleyball team and “go over the good old days again.”

“I’m super honored and incredibly grateful just for the love that Kansas volleyball continues to show to me,” Havili told the Journal-World. “That was (some) of the best four years of my life.”

The dual inductions for Havili are part of an extensive, all-female 2023 inductee class designed to commemorate Title IX, which features six additional individuals and four more teams to supplement her and her 2015 teammates. They will be honored at KU Aug. 30 and throughout the following weekend, including at the season-opening football game Sept. 1.

The recognition comes as Havili continues her transition into coaching following a playing career overseas. She’s entering her first season as a full-time paid assistant at Miami, after helping out on a volunteer basis at Purdue last season. Havili has the requisite on-court experience to help mentor the Hurricanes’ setters and the youth to connect with them, but she said she’s found out coaching requires so many additional logistical skills.

When you’re a college athlete, “the meals just show up, the bus is always there, there’s always a flight.” With the added perspective of her first years of coaching, Havili said, “I look back at my time at Kansas now with a lot more gratitude.”

Kansas’ Zoe Hill (6) celebrates scoring over Texas’ Paulina Prieto Cerame (19) with Kelsie Payne (8) and Ainise Havili (11) during a match at Gregory Gym in Austin, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016.

The native of Fort Worth, Texas, excelled from her opening moments on campus, starting every match and appearing in every set as a freshman, leading the Big 12 Conference in assists and assists per set along the way. The following year was when everything came together for the Jayhawks for the best season in modern program history, as they went 30-3, fueled in large part by the sophomore American Volleyball Coaches Association All-American duo of Havili and Payne — the first-ever All-Americans for Kansas volleyball. KU won four NCAA Tournament matches, including an upset over No. 1 USC, before falling to Nebraska in the national semifinal.

“I think that’s going to be so awesome, being able to celebrate that team, honestly,” Havili said.

Junior year brought a Big 12 title, and by the end of her Kansas tenure Havili had won that conference’s setter of the year honor in three straight seasons (no one else had ever done it more than once) as she racked up a school record 5,255 assists.

She spent a year playing beach volleyball at Arizona as a graduate student, then tried her hand at going overseas to play professional indoor volleyball in Germany and Turkey, but said that it started to take a toll on her mentally during the pandemic. Havili came back home to Texas and worked as a recruiter for a staffing firm while coaching club volleyball on the side.

“I coached a little bit while I was still playing, summer camps and things like that,” she said, “never really thought that that was a route that I was going to go down.”

But she came to love watching young players grow into the game, and that combined with the increasing national spotlight on college volleyball made her want to take her coaching back to the collegiate ranks.

“People are tuning in to watch regular season games on ESPN, they’re going to show this year’s Final Four on ABC, it’s a super exciting time to be in the sport,” she said.

Her first call was to Bechard, who she said was thrilled for her and eager to help out however possible, and soon enough she found herself on a call with the Purdue staff laying out her goals, and then heading to West Lafayette, Indiana, to get “the whole overall scope of this sport at the collegiate level.”

Joining a staff that had been together for decades required an adjustment but also made clear to Havili the variety of skills she would need to succeed: “the operations, the planning and all these other little things that you don’t think about when you’re a player.”

“They have it down pat,” she said. “The way they run their program is like a well-oiled machine. I basically just kind of learned the ins and outs of this job.”

That set her up to transition to her first paid assistant role with Miami, again after a consultation with Bechard (“He’s just a well-known guy in this country, and it seems like everybody knows coach B”). A visit in January helped her feel comfortable she would jell well with the rest of the staff — another long-tenured group — and comfortable in select other ways.

“That was sunshine and palm trees, how can you say no to that?” she said.

In the six months since, charged primarily with mapping out the Hurricanes’ offensive approach during the spring, she’s been delighted to find a “super motivated and competitive” group of players.

“It’s coming up quick and it came a lot quicker than expected,” Havili said, “but I’m excited to jump into the season headfirst.”

Even sooner, though, will be another trip to Lawrence.

“I’m never going to say no if they keep wanting to bring me back,” she said.

photo by: John Young

Wearing a shirt that reads “Omaha Bound” and a huge smile, Kansas University volleyball sophomore setter Ainise Havili gave out high-fives and hugs as she walked through the crowd gathered at the Horejsi Center to welcome the team back to Lawrence in December 2015. The night before in San Diego, Calif., Kansas outlasted No. 1-ranked USC in a five-set match that saw the Jayhawks come from behind to score the final six points for an upset victory and their first-ever Final Four berth.

photo by: Matt Tait/Journal-World Photo

Former Kansas volleyball All-Americans Ainise Havili, left, and Kelsie Payne, returned to Lawrence last year to become the first players in program history have their jerseys retired.