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Ashley Bodily Will Leave Her Stamp On FAU
11/15/2001 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Nov. 15, 2001
By Bob Gosman
Boca Raton News
The significance of FAU senior volleyball player Ashley Bodily recording 1,000 career kills didn't really hit home with coach Jody Brown until the Owls played at Stetson on Nov. 1.
"They were celebrating that their outside hitter had 600 kills," Brown said. "To get to 1,000 kills with the level of competition that we play is a really good feat. She did most of that in the last three years. She's worked hard for everything she's accomplished."
Bodily, whose kill total is at 1,041 and counting, will lead No. 4 seeded FAU into the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament. The two-day tournament begins at 10 a.m. today with a match between the Owls and Jacksonville at the FAU Gym. If FAU (11-15, 7-3) defeats Jacksonville, it will play Georgia State at 4 p.m. The championship match is slated for noon Saturday.
"I didn't even know about my 1,000th kill until my mom called and said she saw it on the internet," Bodily said. "It wasn't a goal, it was just something that happened."
Bodily's all-around athleticism is one of her biggest assets, but it is also the reason it was far from a certainty that she would play college volleyball.
Bodily, who graduated from Washington High School in Fremont, CA, also excelled at dance, soccer and basketball. She did not even begin playing volleyball competitively until high school.
Bodily was one of a select few athletes who won a "White Sweater Award" at Washington, for earning eight letters in volleyball, basketball and track.
She always dreamed of playing sports at the Division I level, specifically basketball. But in her senior year, she started to get particularly intrigued with volleyball.
"I had never really focused on volleyball, and it was more of a challenge," she said.
When Brown began recruiting her, she knew FAU would be a good place for her to develop despite the distance from home because it met her top-three criteria: It was a Division I school, she had a chance to play right away and she liked Brown's coaching style.
Convincing her father Forrest, however, was another story. The Bodily family is Mormon, and most of his preconceived notions about South Florida were not flattering. In addition, the distance would mean he and his wife Megan would not be fixtures at her matches the way they had been at the past.
But after hearing how much his daughter was impressed with Brown along with talking to some people at his church who said nice things about Boca Raton, he relented.And he's glad he did.
"FAU has been great," he said. "Jody has been fantastic, and she's made a lot of friends. There is a great church for her to go to, and she has her values right."
In one of those wonderful twists of fate, the FAU volleyball team's first-round match in the 1999 NCAA Tournament was against Stanford in the Maples Pavilion.
The Maples Pavilion is just a short-drive away from her hometown, which meant her family and friends watched her play in the venue where she had attended Stanford volleyball and basketball games as a spectator.
"You achieved your dream," Bodily recalls her three closest high school friends telling her after the match.
Bodily, who is second on the Owls this season with 250 kills, has helped FAU to two NCAA Tournament bids.
She would like nothing more than for the Owls to win the A-Sun Tournament and go to the NCAA Tournament for a third time.
"We have the potential," Bodily said. "It's just a matter of believing we can do it."
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