KEALAKEKUA — Following a growing pipeline, Konawaena’s Kapoina Bailey will fly to Lindenwood University next fall on scholarship to play women’s rugby.
As one of the most accomplished athletes to suit up for the the Wildcats, Bailey will join back up with former teammates Nika Paogofie-Buyten and Erika Larson to play for the Lions. And that is of no coincidence.
“My dad coached Nika and Erika a while back and one day during my junior year they messaged my dad to say hi and ask how he was,” Bailey said with a smirk on her face. “Then they got to the point when they told him they would love to play with me again.”
While that may have been the first step to getting Bailey to sign with Lindenwood, it would not be the last time the school seemed to come up in conversation.
“A month or two after that, I was at a judo tournament where the son of my JV football coach was competing,” Bailey said. “His step-dad came up and said I should check out this school, Lindenwood, and I remembered someone had just talked to me about that.”
The seed was planted, but it seemed Lindenwood was hoping to pluck Bailey from the Big Island much faster than possible.
“They thought I was a senior and they kept talking to everyone around me, trying to see what I was going to do,” Bailey said with a laugh. “Finally my dad just asked them, ‘why are you pushing so hard, you know she is only a junior right’. That kind of settled that.”
When Bailey did become a senior, Lindenwood was definitely on her radar and she decided to make an official visit — in the winter.
“It had just snowed a couple of days before I got there and there was some still on the ground,” said Bailey, who admitted she had not touched snow before that time. “I wanted to touch it and they told me that wasn’t a good idea. But I had never done it before so I touched it. Never again. I knew right away this is something I wanted to avoid.”
Of course avoiding snow is going to be difficult since it will be an issue in some games during the college season. However, despite learning she will be playing in the snow, her trip overall to the campus was a pleasant one.
More importantly, she learned from her future college head coach, Billy Nicholas, that she will have an opportunity to play varsity right away.
“The coach was really nice and took me and my hostess out for Chinese food,” Bailey said. “We talked about rugby and he talked to me about playing on varsity. That was very exciting to hear.”
But before that could happen, Bailey had to first convince her parents that Lindenwood was the right school for her. The biggest hurdle was a religious one.
Bailey’s family is strongly connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Bailey’s parents really wanted her to attend a BYU school.
However, this is where the persistence of the Lindenwood head coach paid off.
“Luckily he was able to find some churches around campus I could go to and also found some people from the school who go there,” Bailey said. “After that my mom said okay. They also offered a full-ride scholarship and with the deal there, we decided it was time to close it.”
Bailey is adamant that her signing could not have possible if not for her dad, James Bailey, who helped train her, often twice a day for two-hour sessions, a routine that Bailey still does now.
James Bailey, a native of New Zealand where rugby is ingrained in the culture, was a big supporter of his daughter from an early age, but there was one particular moment in Bailey’s mind when she said her father knew she would be someone special in the sport of rugby.
“When I was 10, I started playing with the under-18 high school team and there was one game against Hilo where their biggest girl had injured of couple of our girls,” Bailey said. “I did not expect to get the ball because I was playing on the outside, on the wing, but they passed it to me.
“My dad was scared for my life and the Hilo girl came running at me, but I bounced right off and kept on running,” she added. “He likes to tell me from that moment he knew I was going to be ‘more than just a girl on the Big Island.’”
Along with Kealakehe’s Paogofie-Buyten and Larson, Bailey joins Tama Paogofie-Buyten — Nika’s older brother — as Big Island standouts to call Lindenwood their college home. Setu Vole, a Waverider senior, is also slated to start with the Lions in the fall.
Bailey is also a high school state champion in judo and wrestling, winning both golds her junior year. She competed in football at Konawaena and was a member of the Wildcats’ state-runner up team in 2018.