Friends, teammates and relatives all congratulated Fa Leilua when she graduated from Mississippi State on May 1, but Leilua remembers one call above the rest.
When she got on the phone with her mother Paiao, back in Southern California, Leilua finally got to say the three words she’d been waiting so long to utter.
We did it.
After five years of college and four seasons on the softball field, Leilua had become the first person in her family to graduate from college. She was proud to share the big moment with her mother, whose longtime work and support helped Leilua get to that point.
“I think that the biggest thing for me that day was to tell my mom we finally finished something that we worked so hard for,” Leilua said.
Leilua’s time in Starkville isn’t over yet, as she has taken another year of collegiate eligibility and will play for the Bulldogs in 2021 while pursuing a master’s degree. But her graduation — despite being virtual — acted as the culmination of years and years of hard work.
As a first-generation college student, the Hawthorne High School and Arizona State product knows the importance of her recent accomplishment. Attending college was a goal shared by Leilua and her father, Sio, ever since Leilua received her first-ever letter of interest from the University of Arizona in eighth grade.
But after Leilua had two standout seasons at Arizona State, Sio died of a heart attack while his daughter was home for Christmas break in 2017. Leilua sat out the 2018 season, then transferred to Mississippi State in search of a fresh start.
And while Leilua was overjoyed to receive her bachelor’s degree, she wishes she’d been able to call her father so they could celebrate the news together.
“It’s something that I know he was proud of,” she said. “That’s something I can trust and have faith in.”
Leilua’s mother, who helped support the dream her husband had for their daughter, reassured Leilua that Sio was still proud of her.
“‘He’s smiling down on you,'” Paiao said that day on the phone. “‘From here on out, you’ve just gotta keep moving forward.'”
Losing her father was just one of the obstacles Leilua encountered as she fought to achieve a goal she wasn’t initially sure was possible for her.
She had to balance time spent on the field with time spent in the classroom. She battled the towering expectations she set for herself, realizing she played best when she was having fun and relaxing on the diamond. She also had to deal with changing circumstances in softball, playing under five different head coaches in her five years of college to date.
“I just couldn’t really fathom it just because of all the years and hard work I put in,” Leilua said. “It was a very surreal moment for me.”
For freshman Celeste Soliz, the first member of her family to attend college in the United States, that unreal feeling — of doing something unprecedented — didn’t manifest itself until she was home in Texas after the Bulldogs’ 2020 season was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“‘At a time like this, yeah, this is kind of crazy — in a good way,'” Soliz thought to herself.
The catcher and utility player, an academic standout at Lovejoy High School in Lucas, Texas, said she planned to attend college regardless of softball but that the scholarship she received definitely helped her reach that point.
During her high school days, attending a long-ago softball camp at Arizona State, Soliz remembers that she and a friend were given a tour of the locker room by none other than Leilua, whom Soliz had often seen playing on TV and looked up to. (Leilua, used to young players coming in and out, doesn’t remember the event.)
“She was kind of a big name, really,” Soliz said of the player who would be her teammate years later and more than 1,500 miles away. “She still is.”
Soliz eventually settled on the Sun Devils, but after the fall semester, she needed a change. She transferred to MSU mid-year and switched her major from earth and space exploration to mechanical engineering.
“Going to Mississippi State was like a brand-new opportunity, really,” Soliz said.
Soliz’s grandmother, raised in Mexico, was the valedictorian of the 1980 graduating class of the Instituto Tecnologico de Zacatecas, but the Bulldogs’ freshman is in a unique spot stateside.
Acknowledging the opportunity she’s gotten, Soliz hopes to be a good role model and invite her two younger brothers to walk the trail she has blazed.
“I think it’s a big responsibility,” she said. “I’m kind of making a path they can hopefully follow.”
Three-year-old Gabriel is nowhere close to such a decision, but Soliz hopes 15-year-old Corey is inspired by what she’s accomplished. If Corey wants to go to college, he can just look at his sister as an example of how to achieve that dream, Soliz said.
“I hope he can look at me and say, ‘My sister did it. I can do it, too,'” she said.
Leilua, who said that she never would have made it to college without softball, hopes to be an example to the generations to come. While her two brothers, Sio and Lipo, and her sister Nila did not attend college, Leilua has her eyes on her two nieces: 10-year-old Kinai and 6-year-old Kiairagi.
She wants her brother’s daughters to live out their childhood a bit more first, but before long, their softball education will begin.
“Soon, we’re gonna pop up some nets and some tees and kind of just teach them the basics,” Leilua said.
Leilua’s own schooling — both within and outside of softball — isn’t over just yet. In the fall, she’ll start her master’s program, something she said goes beyond the goal she and Sio set so many years ago.
“This is something that my dad and I didn’t even think to do or didn’t even have a perspective on,” Leilua said.
She said she hopes the things she has already accomplished will inspire people like her who don’t feel like they have a shot at achieving the same goals.
“I’m here to say that it is possible,” Leilua said. You can get through it.”
Leilua, who hopes to become a college coach when her playing career and her schooling eventually come to an end, emphasized that her graduation was just the close to one chapter of her life, just a stepping-stone for her and the people she hopes to inspire.
After all, there’s still more to be done.
“It doesn’t only stop here,” Leilua said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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