Around the time Title IX was enacted in 1972, 6-year-old Reydan “Tita” Ahuna wanted to play sports rather than watch others play from the sidelines.

Growing up in the Tantalus area with two brothers, she begged her mom to let her play. It wasn’t until her mom became the president of the Tantalus Athletic Club that Ahuna got her chance.

“I loved it,” Ahuna said recently. “I played football, basketball and baseball growing up. I just loved playing sports.”

Ahuna, now one of the co-athletic directors at Punahou School, grew up as a self-described “student of sports.” She was a multi-sport athlete (volleyball, basketball, softball, track and field) in her time at Kamehameha and played college volleyball at the University of Hawaii, captaining the 1987 team that won the national championship.

She also coached volleyball successfully at the high school and college levels, winning two state titles in boys volleyball at Kamehameha and two national titles in women’s volleyball at Hawaii Pacific University. Ahuna is recognized as the only person in the history of Hawaii volleyball to win high school state titles and college national championships as a player and coach.

“I guess you can say I had a growth mindset about athletics since I was little,” she said. “It’s just natural as an athlete to learn the game, and as a coach and a teacher to teach it.”

Ahuna stepped away from coaching and the senior women’s administrator’s role at HPU in 2005 but remained a teacher, both in the classroom and on the court. She taught at DOE and online schools, as well as opening Tita Ahuna’s Volleyball Academy, a club that helped develop the volleyball skills of young student-athletes, before returning to high school athletics as an associate athletic director at Punahou seven years ago.

Ahuna is one of the school’s three co-athletic directors, and her duties include overseeing multiple sports throughout the school year — she also serves as the school’s girls volleyball coach — but the one thing she highlighted was serving as a mentor to the school’s coaches.

“I love working with people and seeing growth from our coaches and providing them with tools to be successful, whether it’s attending workshops or bringing guest speakers. … I like when coaches want to increase their professional knowledge,” she said about her role. “When our coaches can grow, our student-athletes will too.”

Growth as a student-athlete is something she is very familiar with. As a multi-sport athlete at Kamehameha, Ahuna played volleyball “maybe three or four months out of the year,” compared to other Division I athletes who played the sport year-round. To “catch up” she spent summers with the U.S. national teams.

“I was gone every summer trying to learn more,” Ahuna said. “I was blessed to have made the USA National B Team, the World University Games team, the junior national team. I loved it.”

She entered UH as a setter, but her athleticism allowed her to play all over the court and see time as a setter, outside hitter, right side hitter and back-row player on her way to becoming the first player in program history to record 1,000 kills and 1,000 digs.

“Tita was such a great all-around athlete … she was a very good volleyball player, but she didn’t necessarily have a position,” former UH coach Dave Shoji said recently. “She could do everything on the volleyball court but wasn’t a standout hitter or setter.”

“I guess I had some natural abilities,” she said. “I just love playing sports and competing with my teammates.”

“When you’re fighting, you got to come with something extra special. Five-foot-8 is not that tall. In Hawaii, it is, but overall, it’s not that tall, so you need to come with something different. Something extraordinary.”

Athleticism was perhaps one of the intangibles that Ahuna possessed, but Shoji noted another that she had that did not need to “catch up.”

“She was a mentally tough student-athlete coming right out of high school, and that was proven when she got here at UH,” he said. “She was always a rock and a solid performer.”

The championships Ahuna won as a player and a coach are icing on the cake to her. The journey of wins, bumps in the road, the grind of practice and triumphs are what is meaningful to her. She’s also very much aware of the impact of Title IX, having “reaped the benefits” of it.

“I’m really appreciative of the athletes who came before me who struggled through adversity. They struggled just to play sports, especially at UH,” she said. “Some of the athletes who had to work, go to school, and play just to have an opportunity; they paved the way for me and other athletes to receive full scholarships to do what we love to do.”

“We cannot forget the people who came before us who paved the way for athletes like me.”

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Reydan “Tita” Ahuna

University of Hawaii women’s volleyball player (1984-1987)

Hawaii Pacific University women’s volleyball coach (1996-2005)

Education: Kamehameha Schools, University of Hawaii at Manoa (Bachelor’s and M.Ed.)

Highlights:

Two-time state high school volleyball champion as a player (1982, 1983)

1987 NCAA Division I champion as a player

Two-time AVCA All-American (1985, 1986)

Two-time USVBA All-American (1986, 1987)

1988 Jack Bonham Award winner

Two-time state high school boys volleyball champion as a coach (1991, 1993)

Two-time NCAA Division II champion as a coach (1998, 2000)

2000 AVCA/NCAA Division II National Coach of the Year

1998 AVCA/NCAA Division II Pacific Region Coach of the Year

Five-time PacWest Coach of the Year (2000, 2001, 2003-05)

June 23, 2022, marked the 50th anniversary of Title IX. To commemorate this watershed event, the Star-Advertiser will publish a series of stories celebrating the achievements of female pioneers and leaders with Hawaii ties.

Click here to view the Title IX series.