That phrase grin and bear it? Too often, people focus on the second part.
We celebrate the ability to withstand pain, glorify it, worship the warrior spirit. Playing through pain — physical, mental, emotional, any — is a talent in itself, no different in volleyball than leaping ability or quick feet. But, again, that’s the second part, the bear-it part.
What about the grin?
What about the ability to not have a torn shoulder tear apart your season? What about the fortitude not just to withstand a slipped disk, but to not have it show come Monday? Some athletes sprain a pinkie and blame every missed shot on it, every bad swing. They wear their injuries on their snarls and huffs.
As the Arizona Wildcats embark on their first Sweet 16 since 2005 and eighth in the last 24 seasons on Friday against Washington in Lincoln, Nebraska, Kalei Mau is all teeth, no frown. How could she not be? The outside hitter amassed 23 kills and 10 digs in a second-round upset of ninth-seeded Michigan State. On Tuesday, she was named all-region.
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Mau has done this through back and shoulder injuries that would sideline a lesser competitor, flashing the same smile and spirit of heart that brought her YouTube fame, when, as a young teenager, her ukulele videos regularly went viral.
You’d never imagine that behind that smile of a 14-year-old girl was the heart of a lion.
‘Like being shot in the back’
Dave Rubio thought she was toast.
She looked old, decrepit, like creaky stairs in a horror movie. And for Rubio, Freddy Krueger isn’t as scary.
Life without Mau, Arizona’s top offensive threat?
Yet there she was, hunched over in pain on the sidelines of Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse on Sept. 17, pawing at her back in obvious pain.
“What did she do?” the Wildcats coach thought, because it’s not like she’d taken the biggest of spills. This is volleyball; just like there are bumps, there are bruises. You learn to deal with it.
Rubio knew this back, though, was as precious as it was tender: After last season, one in which Mau led Arizona and finished third in the Pac-12 with 4.33 kills/set and finished all-league and honorable mention all-region, she went on a trip with a boyfriend to Malaysia, got in a car accident and suffered a herniated disk. She played through the pain during the sand volleyball season and expected to be fine. On the last day of two-a-days, she dislocated her shoulder on a passing drill. Insult, meet injury.
Mau toughed it out, though, with Rubio careful to manage her myriad injuries.
On this day, though, against Loyola of Chicago on the Butler Bulldogs’ home court in Indianapolis, Mau took a tumble. A ruptured disk. Perhaps it was the searing pain that gave it away, but Rubio wasn’t the only one who thought things were done for the standout senior.
“She bent over like an 80-year-old woman,” Rubio said. “I just looked at her like, ‘What happened? Holy smokes, she can barely walk.’”
Mau sums it up thusly: “That was probably the worst pain I’ve ever been in.”
It was the second or third play of the set. Mau finished it out, then hobbled over to the bench.
“Going through my head, I was like, ‘Pretend it doesn’t hurt, you might have just aggravated something, and then the adrenaline slowed down and I was hit with the most excruciating pain,” she said. “I kind of crawled off and just told the trainer that something happened. I could barely walk, sit down or stand.
“The doctor said a ruptured disk is like being shot in the back.”
One sneeze away
If Mau thought that was bad, the following three days were worse. That’s how long it took to get an MRI.
“It was the longest three days,” she says.
The results came in: No additional injury. It was just a matter of pain tolerance. How much could Mau handle?
Put it this way:
“I was prepared to go forward with her being out,” Rubio said.
Mau missed the following game against Butler, and the beginning of conference play, including a surprising 3-1 home win over Arizona State and a 3-2 loss at No. 16 Colorado. They eased her back onto the floor, one drill at a time. Rubio handled her like a surgeon handles a scalpel, deftly, cautiously.
Back injuries are among the hardest to return from, if only because searing pain is just a sneeze way.
“She can spike it and land awkwardly and be fine, but she could sneeze and be out weeks. I’d never gone through something like this in my coaching career, and she obviously had never been through it,” Rubio said.
Mau pushed Rubio to let her free, but the coach was tentative. She coaxed him for more opportunities, one more swing, one more jump. She says she, “always let him know how I was feeling, but I would definitely exaggerate and say I was doing better than I was.”
Rubio remembers when she finally laid down the cards.
“She just said, ‘Dave, I’m gonna play, and if my back goes out, it goes out, but I’m going for it,” he said.
Mau, a Minnesota transfer, was already done with her UA schooling. This last season was to display all of her volleyball talents for the world to see. And her talent, like her heart, is immense.
“I had my plan made for myself that I’d finish, and my biggest goal was to be an All-American, and I stuck to that,” she said. “I put in extra work, more work into the rehab and physical therapy than I did on the court. Because this is everything. I came back because I knew this would be a great opportunity to show what I can do.”
A warrior’s spirit
Back to that toothy grin.
There may not be a worse thing about sports than playing with a whiner. Ever been on a fast break with a guy with a bum leg? If he skips the pass off a defender, he immediately pulls up, grabbing his hammy. It’s exhausting.
Mau, though, wasn’t about to bring down the team’s spirit. This is a girl who serenades the Wildcats, not sabotages them.
“If you saw her play, you’d never know she was hurt,” Rubio said. “She gets blocked, or makes a bad attack choice, and she’s not hunching over and clutching her back. I told her — if you can’t do it, then don’t, but we can’t have you be a distraction on the floor.”
Mau’s teammates admire her ability to not just withstand the pain, but not let it affect her mood.
“She never uses it as an excuse, and in fact during the games she’s always playing her heart out,” senior libero Laura Larson said. “She’s never let it take over her game. She’s trying to put it to the side. Half the time we don’t even know if her shoulder or back are hurting. Half the fans probably don’t even know she’s been hurt.”
That seems to be a theme.
But where does it come from?
That aforementioned “warrior spirit” was borne into her in Hawaii, where she lived the first 18 years of her life. It’s not just a writer’s trope, either: There is an innate toughness, she says, a beauty in the struggle.
“It has a lot to do with my upbringing, how I was raised,” she said. “It was all about never quitting. I couldn’t just let myself say ‘oh well, dang.’ Look how far I’ve come? I’m from an island, went from there to Minnesota, and now I’m in Arizona making a name for myself, and I’m not gonna let that go to waste. I’ve dreamt about this all my life.”
Not all her life. She grew up a soccer stud, and she found her passion with music. But she grew and grew — all the way to 6-1 — and you can’t ignore 73 inches that can jump.
This is in her, and she’s going to take it all the way.
She’s going to use all of her want and will to take Arizona as far as it will go, as far as her back allows.
“I was out for almost a month this year, and every day I’d cheer them on and say the team’s good without me — but that hurts, too,” she said. “This was my team last year. Everyone loves being relied on. And a little bit would be eaten out of me when coach would say, ‘We’ll be fine without her.’”
Now that’s a pain that wouldn’t go away.
