Looking back almost a year, it all makes sense.
Kayla Fortner made all the right choices and did all the right things for all the right reasons. Look back over your shoulder at how the Northwest senior maneuvered through a difficult decision and a difficult time, and you say, "Of course."
Last May, though, no one was saying that.
Today, last May seems eons ago, forever ago.
Last May, Fortner's sporting future was, at best, cloudy. Today, she is the Journal's Jefferson County Female Athlete of the Year for the 2010-11 school year, a four-sport standout completing a year of individual and team successes.
Last spring, though, who knows what was coming?
Fortner surprised everyone who follows area sports - and stunned her Northwest coaches and teammates - when she decided to play volleyball as a senior rather than softball. How big a surprise was it? When was the last time you heard of an NCAA Division I prospect deciding not to take part in her specialty? Ever?
"I kind of kept it a secret until the last day of school," she said. "No one could believe I was going to play volleyball when I didn't have college settled."
For Fortner, college meant college softball. That was obvious. She is an outstanding student - she has a 4.0 GPA - but softball was her ticket to college. She was one of the metro area's standout talents.
But she loved volleyball and her friends - friends she had played volleyball with as a freshman and sophomore - loved volleyball, too. They wanted one more season together.
"I wasn't ready to give it up yet," Fortner said.
So, bit by bit, she put things together last spring. She checked with her parents, both of whom teach and coach in the Northwest district. She checked with the Northwest volleyball coach, she checked with her Lions softball coach. She explained to each what she wanted to do and why she wanted to do it.
She remembers what she said to her high school softball coach: "Would you be mad at me if I didn't play softball?
"It was not easy at all," she said. "It was definitely a hard decision. Very hard."
Northwest girls basketball coach Jason Brown never was in the middle of the drama, but he said it is impossible not to appreciate how Fortner managed things.
"She made some tough choices, and she handled them well," he said. "She's one of those kids who didn't want to look back and have regrets."
Playing with the Worth Prospects club team last summer, she caught the eye of several college softball coaches. Late in the summer, University of Evansville coach Mark Redburn had seen enough to know that Fortner was the kind of player who could give his program a boost. He offered her a scholarship.
"I had a feeling it was going to work out," Fortner said.
Even so, it was a tremendous weight off her shoulders to have her college plans pinned down. The great question mark in her plan to skip high school softball was: What if she didn't have a scholarship by the end of the summer season? What then?
Fortner worried from the start of the summer until almost the end.
"I would wake up every morning and I'd check my e-mail to see if anybody had sent me something that said, ‘Hey, I saw you at a tournament the other day,'" she said.
"After I committed, I was so relieved," she said. "The pressure was gone."
Well, almost all the pressure was gone. She still had to explain her fall plans to Redburn. He probably never had a recruit pass up her final year of softball to play another sport.
But Fortner laid everything out for him. She told him the same story she had told her parents, the same one she had told everyone at Northwest. And he had the same reaction.
"He understood," she said. "He was fine with it."
With college settled, Fortner threw herself into volleyball last fall. And she was - and this is not a surprise - terrific. A starter with the volleyball team as a freshman and sophomore before taking a year off to focus on softball as a junior, she hit, passed, defended and served like she had never been away from the game.
She was among the Suburban West Conference leaders in a long list of statistical categories, but the best measurement of her play probably is Northwest's success. A Lions team that finished 12-16-2 without Fortner in 2009 went 27-6-0 and set a school record for victories when she rejoined the lineup in 2010.
"I'm so happy that I went back and played," she said.
Fortner repeated her volleyball success in basketball. The Lions were in the top 10 in the STLhighschoolsports.com rankings in the first half of the season before finishing 13-12.
Brown, who calls her the best basketball player he has coached at Northwest, said Fortner was a key contributor - above and beyond her stats - to every team she played on.
"She's a tremendous four-sport athlete (softball, volleyball, basketball and soccer), but more importantly, she was a four-sport leader here," he said.
Fortner's contributions, statistically and otherwise, were obvious to the teams in the Suburban West. An all-conference pick in softball as a sophomore and junior, she was a first-team all-leaguer in volleyball and basketball this year.
Brown said Fortner's biggest impact at Northwest was to lift the teams she played on to a level they hadn't achieved in several years. This year, that was true in volleyball and basketball.
"She kind of made us relevant," Brown said.
That seems an unusual compliment.
But Fortner, a Division I athlete who listened to her heart in picking volleyball over softball in the fall, is an unusual talent.
