Leader of Monsters
Namoa leads team to NJCAAs
Susi Namoa has always played the game of basketball hard, but now she has a little extra motivation.
Namoa, the unanimous Maui Interscholastic League Division I Player of the Year in 2019 for Lahainaluna High School, is a 5-foot-9 sophomore guard for the Eastern Arizona College women’s basketball team that is headed to the National Junior College Athletic Association tournament.
Her uncle Taniela Motuliki died about a month and a half ago, leaving Namoa to ponder “if I even wanted to play basketball anymore. Me and my dad (Loloa Namoa) are really close, so when I see him down it really brings me down, too. They were both, like, my life.”
She attended Motuliki’s funeral in California and came home to Maui, leaving her team for about a week and a half altogether.
“It was good to go and leave here to get my mind off of stuff and to be with my dad and my family,” Namoa said via phone Monday. “I was there for not a good situation, but just to be with family it helped me, so when I came back I think that’s what really helped me. When I came back I was able to just be me and play how I usually play.”
She was named Most Valuable Player of the Region I tournament held over the weekend to guide the Gila Monsters to the NJCAA tournament that begins Monday.
“It was actually surprising,” Namoa said. “I’ve had a lot on my mind, so when it came to basketball that was really the place that I could just let go of everything. Then towards the end of the season that’s when I was, like, I was able to step it up.
“If you want to go far with the team, knowing that I was a captain, I had to be a leader.”
The Gila Monsters will board a bus for the nine-hour ride from Thatcher, Ariz., to the 24-team tournament in Lubbock, Texas, in a couple days. The 19th-seeded Gila Monsters play 14th-seeded Moberly Area (Mo.) Community College on Tuesday.
“It’s crazy,” Namoa said. “That will be the longest bus ride I have ever taken, by a lot. I hope the air conditioning works well.”
A talk with Lahainaluna coach Todd Rickard helped Namoa be ready for the regional.
“It was just a good conversation with him, good to talk to him, reminded me of the old days in Lahaina,” Namoa said. “I haven’t seen him in a while, so to be able to talk to him was good. Winning MVP, I know a lot of people from Maui heard about it, so it was just cool to see people back home still support me and stuff like that.
“Definitely miss home, miss the people, miss playing for Lahaina(luna) and all that, but I wouldn’t be MVP without my team over here.”
Namoa is averaging 9.7 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game. In the regional final, she had a team-high 17 points, four rebounds and two assists in a 56-47 win over Arizona Western to clinch her school’s first trip to nationals since 2016.
“Susi has been great since the day she got here,” EAC coach Cameron Turner said. “She was second team all-conference and all-region and she was on the all-freshman team. So, coming in she was one of the top returners. She doesn’t fill up the score sheet by scoring 25 points or anything like that, but what she does is she’s Draymond Green. She’s going to give you a little bit of everything.
“She plays with an edge to her that winning teams just need.”
The recent trip to California for the funeral and then home to Maui lifted Namoa back to the tenacious ballplayer that Lunas fans know well.
“It was cool to go home, let everything go, all my emotions, and then come back,” Namoa said. “I felt like a chip was gone off my shoulder.”
Rickard’s relationship with coaches at the University of Alaska-Anchorage led Namoa to commit to going there after she is done at EAC. Turner is a former men’s assistant at UAA.
Turner has a trip planned to Maui to recruit more players after the national tournament. He is happy that Namoa has committed to returning to EAC next season — she will be a sophomore in eligibility again due to COVID-19 — before she goes to Alaska-Anchorage to complete her college career.
“She’s a vocal leader for us, she gives energy every single day,” Turner said. “She’s our leader, so it’s very fitting that at playoff time she has elevated her game to another level. In the championship game, she just kind of put the team on her back. She even told me, ‘Coach, I got this, don’t worry, I got this.’ ”