Zelda Kelson: ‘Volleyball is my heart’

Her days were filled with meetings and hard work at Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific on Oahu, where Zelda Kelson continued a fight against a relentless foe that’s not as tough as she is.

Diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2014, Kelson stuffed it into a dormant box a year ago, but the disease returned, targeted her spine and left her paralyzed from the chest down.

She and her husband Kendall Kelson went to the rehab hospital on March 2 and learned how to manage life in a wheelchair.

They flew home on Friday, just in time for the men’s and women’s AA championships at the 60th annual Haili Volleyball Tournament on Saturday at Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium.

Zelda doesn’t know if she’ll attend. But one thing is clear: the Cuzins volleyball club coach will be thinking about the sport that puts a smile on her face.

“Volleyball is my heart,” she said. “I have so much passion for it. I started when I was 12 years old. The reason I started to coach was to give back to the community. It’s so nice to have that kind of support from the community.

“This is my 30th year of coaching. I started when I was 30 years old, and I’m 61 now. I started with the junior kids, high school for two years, coached men’s for 10 years and did women’s for the rest. It was built by my passion for the sport.”

Last year, Coach Zelda was the Haili honoree for her long service in volleyball. She played club ball for the late Raymond Rowe and later coached his men’s Keaukaha club team for a decade.

She was Hilo High’s coach for two years in the 1990s. Then Coach Zelda started the Cuzins volleyball club 20 years ago and hasn’t stopped coaching since.

She was instrumental in Hilo’s 1972 HHSAA championship, the BIIF’s first state title in girls volleyball.

“Zelda’s Journey Through It All” has been well chronicled on her gofundme.com page by her daughter Anela.

More than 100 people have contributed and given her words of encouragement, showing Coach Zelda that she’s got supportive teammates all over the place.

In early January, she was doing a fundraiser for her Cuzins club team. On Jan. 14, she felt her legs getting weaker. A day later, she was holding her walker, couldn’t walk and collapsed. Fortunately, Kendall was home at the time.

Life has thrown her some curveballs, but cancer picked the wrong person to get into a fight with. Coach Zelda is swinging back. She’s hitting cancer on the head with hard shots.

“I’m good. As long as I know I’m still mobile and God keeps me on earth, I can’t give up,” she said. “I have a life still. I’m not going to give up. You still have to move on with your life no matter what.

“My family and children (Ashford, JR, and Anela) support me so much. I was always that way, never giving up. I feel good, mentally and physically.”

Back at home, Coach Zelda will continue her chemotherapy. Chemo is a drug designed to wipe out cancer cells. It also can harm good cells, too, leaving patients feeling fatigued.

“I have high hopes,” she said. “I’m positive. My motivation is to go on with my life. I can’t be negative because I’m still here.”

Birth of Cuzins

Coach Zelda formed Cuzins to coach Anela and her cousins. A few players were not blood-related, and the Kelson parents/coaches played with the team name’s spelling.

“We started when my daughter was in the eighth grade, and now she’s 32,” Kendall said. “It was supposed to end after the original Cuzins graduated from high school. But so much new people joined the club, and we kept growing and never stopped.

“When she got diagnosed in 2014, she never stopped. When she was going through chemo, she was still coaching. We just couldn’t stop. It became a part of our lives.”

Kendall joked that the initial goal was to turn Anela and her cousins into decent volleyball players because they weren’t all that good.

But back then, the Kelson coaches had a three-word philosophy of Intelligence, Commitment, and Effort.

It worked like a charm because in Anela’s senior year Cuzins won their age division at the Haili tournament.

Coach Zelda made quick progress in her rehab, something Kendall credited to her life spent as a competitive athlete.

“The physical therapist and occupational therapist were amazed at how much she progressed,” he said. “That was through her own tenacity. She got that from volleyball. All the things she used to tell the kids she’s using for herself.”

Family feeling

The best youth coaches are not remembered so much for leading their teams to championships, but for touching their players’ hearts.

One such player is Erleen Oguma, a 2015 Keaau graduate, who played for Cuzins and spent two years at Tacoma Community College.

“Her personality was so heart-warming and genuine,” said Oguma, who plans to transfer to UH-Hilo and later work in law enforcement. “She treated us like her own children, same love and same treatment.

“What I learned from her as a coach was that you could be told a thousand times what to do, but it’s your own decision to choose what to do with that information. She also taught us to perform with love for the game, not because we have to but because we want to. Our performances were better after learning that.”

Oguma remembers a little detail that Coach Zelda picked up. She wore a Keaau Cougars softball shirt to practice with her Hawaiian middle name on the back.

“After practice, we always had a team meeting and talk,” Oguma said. “She asked me, ‘What’s that name on the back of your shirt?’ I said, ‘It’s my middle name. It means the Scarlet.’

“Then she said, ‘I’m going to start calling you Kau‘ula. She never called me Erleen after that. It was a big deal because mainly only my family calls me by my middle name. I felt so much of a better connection with her. It meant a lot to me, just because not many people call me by my Hawaiian name.”

Hopefully, Coach Zelda is feeling well enough to attend the Haili Tournament, where a gym full of teammates will welcome her return home.