Rainbow Wahine golfer Ka‘ili Britos will graduate with honors in English this May. It might be more appropriate for her to pick up a degree in creatively navigating the delicate balance between student and athlete.
There is so much more to the Kamehameha graduate than golf, where she has led Hawaii in every tournament this year, and almost every event since she narrowly missed winning the Western Athletic Conference championship as a freshman.
There is so much more to her than writing, where an unexpected fiction award in 2011 gave her the confidence to transform a short story "Scales Beneath My Skin" into a Hawaiian novella. She will present it to be evaluated and graded next month, then it will be published.
She describes it as a "coming of age story" incorporating "traditional perspectives of Hawaiian culture" into a contemporary setting "in a way that makes mythology a natural part of the world." Ultimately, her characters "find light through stories or artistic outlets such as painting and writing."
Britos is Hawaiian —and Chinese, Filipino, Dutch, Creole, French, German and a few other ethnicities — and speaks three languages. Over the past four years she has found artistic outlets in many vastly different areas.
Somehow, she has made peace with golf, and approaches her final few months of the college game with unabashed joy, thanks in large part to sports psychologist Darryl Oshiro.
"There’s a lot of fear and doubt that comes with golf," Britos said. "He has helped me figure out how to push it down a little bit. Not take it away or get rid of it completely, but just how to work with it."
Britos is the only Wahine with a scoring average in the 70s, but Hawaii had a breakthrough at its 28th Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational. On Tuesday, it threw out a score in the 70s for the first time in recent history. On Wednesday, it had its best finish of the season (tied for eighth), with Britos also finishing eighth individually.
"She has learned how to play a golf course like a chess game," Wahine coach Lori Castillo said. "Where does she want to be? What part of the green, what part of the fairway, where does she want to putt from?"
Britos is also analytical on the academic side, with a huge dose of creativity. Her grade-point average has shot up since high school, to 3.7, something she attributes to being able to focus on courses she enjoys, and maturity. She is not afraid of working hard, but is also acutely aware of enjoying the ride, and golf course, and the fiction class that inspired her to pursue writing so passionately.
Her father is Peter Britos, a local film writer and producer, and Hawaii Pacific University professor of multimedia and communication. He was a world-class racquetball player and often showed up in Magnum P.I. He had Ka‘ili writing in a journal from a young age. She is working with him now on the production side of his independent film, "Mango Dreams."
Pursuing multiple passions runs in the family. Ka‘ili, born in Switzerland and enrolled in a French school in Los Angeles until moving home in seventh grade, contemplates a future on the European golf tour. She is also interested in studying production at the USC film school. And, she wants to be a "published author, first and foremost."
"You don’t see a lot of Hawaiian authors …," she explained. "A lot of the Hawaiian authors are limited to poetry and activism. I wanted to do something more contemporary that spoke to my generation because, at least in my generation, only a few are really involved in the Hawaiian community. I really wanted to explore what it is to be Hawaiian, especially from such a mixed background.
"I don’t necessarily fit into that community, but it’s a community I’m really, really passionate about because I do feel I belong in it and grew up in it. I wanted to write about my family experience in this community in a unique way."
In the midst of all this, she hopes to leave "as good an impression on this (golf) program as I possibly can," Britos said. "I’ve been trying to do that these last four years — academics, golf, and overall image. It’s been really important to me to give everything I have."
