Bunmi Akinnusotu will enter the Bryant University Athletics Hall of Fame in February.

Journal photo / Frieda Squires

Her family had no money for college, so in the spring of her senior year at Woonsocket High School she pursued an option that required courage more than cash. The U.S. Marine Corps. Her life was about to change with that decision, she knew, but in a way she never could have expected.

Theresa Garlacy, the volleyball coach at Bryant College -- it was 1999 and Bryant was still a college, not a university -- was working the concession stand at a high school volleyball tournament in the Bryant gym that spring. Garlacy spotted the girl and admired her athleticism. Garlacy spoke to her and, even though it was April, encouraged her to apply. She did, and was admitted with a substantial financial aid offer.

Garlacy was thrilled. The girl was thrilled. But there was a problem. She had enlisted in the Marines and had in her hand orders to report to Boston on Aug. 25 for transportation to basic training.

"When is your birthday?" Garlacy asked.

"June 16," the girl replied.

"You can't sign a contract under 18, so you aren't in the Marines," Garlacy said.

It took a visit to the recruiting office by Ted Garlacy, Theresa's husband and assistant coach, and a conference call with Garlacy, the Marine recruiter and the girl to resolve the situation. Yes, she wanted college over the military, the girl told the Marine gunnery sergeant. Because she was not 18 when she signed up, and because she seemed serious about her college intentions, he relented.

And so that August, instead of heading to Parris Island, S.C., for boot camp, Bunmi Akinnusotu left her home in Woonsocket and headed all the way to Smithfield and volleyball training camp. Nine years later, she still feels the repercussions of the change in course that delivered her to what might as well have been another planet.

"Bryant College was one of those distant places. Why would you go there from Woonsocket?" she said during an interview this week. "I was so young. The girls on my team were from middle- to upper-class backgrounds. It was a culture shock."

But Bunmi Akinnusotu could flat out play volleyball, her ticket to success then and to the Bryant Athletics Hall of Fame, into which she will be inducted Feb. 27.

"I don't think I'd be the same person I am today if I had been a regular student. Being an athlete at Bryant College prepared me for things. The level of discipline, the standards they set and the level of expectations they had for players were enormous. Even though Bryant was a small school, it says a lot when they hold athletes to such a high standard," she said.

Akinnusotu became a college volleyball star. A superb net player, she ranks fifth in Bryant history in kills (1,434), eighth in attempts (3,013) and first in percentage (.355). She is third in career blocks (160), second in block assists (339) and second in total blocks (499), eighth in games played (538) and tied for seventh in matches played (155).

She was first-team All-Northeast 10 Conference three times and the NE-10 player of the year as a senior in 2002. She was also a three-time all-region selection, twice a member of the first team. Her Bryant teams won 116 matches and lost 46. They reached the NE-10 semifinals four times and the final twice. They played in four NCAA tournaments and advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2002.

"She is one of the easiest kids I've ever had to coach," Theresa Garlacy said this week. "She always came with the same intensity and concentration level. She focused on what she was there to do and didn't bring the outside world in with her. She was the same every practice and every game."

Akinnusotu's enthusiasm and love of life are contagious, and she became a leader shortly after recovering from that culture shock.

"She was quiet in practice, but she could take over a practice with a look," Garlacy said. "She would clap her hands twice and give that look, and practice would pick up. Because she didn't yak, yak yak, when she spoke, her teammates listened. She set a standard that the younger players tried to live up to."

In many ways Akinnusotu was in the right place at the right time, because under president Ronald K. Machtley's leadership, Bryant was beginning to grow and change in 1999. Diversity was driving students, faculty, staff, organizations and classes, and at that time a young daughter of Nigerian immigrants could find a place at the table.

Akinnusotu was born in Providence. Her father, Richard, was an engineer working in Groton, Conn., and her mother, Phoebe, a nurse's assistant caring for the elderly. She grew up in a United Nations of a neighborhood off Elmwood Avenue until her parents separated and divorced when she was about 13. She moved to Woonsocket with her mother and her little brother, Timi, and survived Woonsocket Middle School, where she was taunted as "the kid from Providence" and where she "got picked on a lot."

But it was in Woonsocket where she started playing sports, CYO basketball at first, "to release a lot of energy, anger and frustration."

Ruth Plante, basketball and volleyball coach at Woonsocket High, had Akinnusotu as a freshman on her basketball team and badgered her for months to try volleyball in the spring.

"I thought volleyball was a white girl's sport, and said, 'I'm not playing a white girl's sport,' " Akinnusotu said with a laugh. "She got me, and I loved it. I didn't get it at first. It took awhile, but it clicked and I became better at volleyball than basketball."

At Bryant, Akinnusotu immersed herself in campus life. She received the Peggy Stone Emerging Leader Award in 2000. She was Bryant's Female Athlete of the Year in 2001 and the Jim Thorpe Athletic Award winner in 2003. She also received the Omar Shareef Spirit Award and was the NCAA Woman of the Year for Bryant.

She befriended football players who were beginning to make their mark on the field and on campus. "Most of my very close friends were from the football team. They supported the volleyball team like no other, and I became very close with many of them," she said.

She made friends with athletes from other teams and with students who were not athletes. Her best friend to this day is Nola Gillham, who came to Bryant from a small town in Colorado and who chided her freshman year "for boo-hooing because I was five miles from home."

"Her circumstances were so different from a lot of kids at Bryant, but you could never tell. She fit in with everybody," Garlacy said.

The same is true today. Akinnusotu lives in Chicago and works in fundraising for the YWCA. She champions the YWCA's mission to eliminate racism and empower women. As a graduate student at Illinois State, she published a paper on the need to educate men in the community to embrace the notion of empowered women. She also volunteered for AmeriCorps and worked in a domestic violence agency while earning a master's degree in applied sociology and community development.

In her work, she frequently draws on her experiences as a girl growing up in Rhode Island

"People in Chicago remind me of folks from Woonsocket. They're hardworking, proud folks," she said. "And I work in churches, synagogues and mosques. That comes from growing up in Providence. I'm with people from other faiths and backgrounds, and they're not that different."

Akinnusotu volunteers with the Urban League of Chicago, and although never a runner in high school or college -- "I hated running" -- she finished the Chicago Marathon this year and raised $2,000 for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.

During that 26-mile endurance test, she thought of the people who made her the woman she is today, a 27-year-old who dreams of working for the United Nations, starting her own business, writing a book.

She thought of her mother and all the years she has worked without complaint. Her father, who went to work at 4:30 in the morning. Her brother, now 24, and his work ethic. Her aunt, Chris Akinnusotu, who watched NBA basketball on television with her and encouraged her to play. Ruth Plante, coach and guidance counselor, "the most amazing woman, the reason I played volleyball. She made sure I made practices. She gave me rides. She made sure I stayed in it." John Shelton, assistant football coach and director of the multicultural center at Bryant, "who made sure students of color on campus had a voice and were comfortable." Judith McDonnell, whose teaching sparked her interest in sociology and who "to this day is one of my greatest mentors." And Theresa and Ted Garlacy, the college coaches who in the spring of 1999 interceded on her behalf with the Marine Corps and changed her life in ways she never could have expected.

"Providence is what shaped me, and Woonsocket is what made me," Akinnusotu said, "and I'm always drawing on my experience from Bryant."

mszostak@projo.com