There was a time when 'Aiea's Lelani Kleman-Maeva was ready to give up.

She was frustrated and confused, and couldn't grasp any of her newly learned volleyball concepts, so she stopped trying.

Then she received a phone call from coach Blythe Yamamoto that changed her mind — and her life.

"I just said, 'No need,' and stopped going for like a week," Kleman-Maeva said. "(Yamamoto) called my house and told me I should come. If she didn't call me I think I would be really fat right now. Or I would be a delinquent."

Kleman-Maeva, an Advertiser All-State first-team selection, is one of Hawai'i's top girls volleyball players.

"She's very coachable, listens and wants feedback; when you have an all-state player still listening and wanting to get better, that's something special," Yamamoto said. "She hasn't even tapped her potential yet."

The senior has already verbally committed to the University of Nevada, and Friday will take an official recruiting trip to the university.

"I didn't even think of college when I was in intermediate school," she said. "I thought I would join the military or live with my parents forever."

Yamamoto first noticed Kleman-Maeva as an eighth-grader, and saw her athletic potential, even though the youngster was clearly clueless on the court.

"My first response was 'that girl is tall,' " Yamamoto said of the then-5-9 Kleman-Maeva. "Then it was, 'she doesn't know what she is doing.' "

"I was really bad; I didn't know anything," said Kleman-Maeva, who is now 5-11. "When the ball would come over I would just stand at the net, and my teammates would be like, 'Lelani!' "

Before joining the team as a freshman she had never played an organized sport. She was born in Hawai'i, but moved to Samoa where she was raised by her grandmother. She moved back to Hawai'i when she was 9.

Not having a background in team sports hindered her in the beginning, but Yamamoto called Kleman-Maeva's improvement "amazing."

"I just wish we had videotaped her during practices so people could see what she was like," Yamamoto said. "People think we are exaggerating. She was always in the wrong spot, doing the wrong thing."

Yamamoto kept Kleman-Maeva on the team as a freshman as a "project." Kleman-Maeva worked her way onto the court the last two matches of the season that year. Her sophomore year, after joining the club Quicksets, she returned as an "above-average player," but it was her junior year that Yamamoto called her "polished."

"In her junior season already, many schools were interested in her. Every college you can think of had written to her," Yamamoto said.

"When we play anybody, they are always trying to stop her; there are two or three blockers up on her every time. The (opposing) crowd goes wild if they dig her or block her. Instead of getting mad, she laughs it off and tells the setter, 'Give me the ball.' "

The hard-hitting, high-flying outside hitter/middle blocker was named the O'ahu Interscholastic Association West Player of the Year last season after helping 'Aiea to a 10-0 record in the West, helping Na Ali'i earn the West's only state berth of the past two seasons. She was named to last year's state all-tournament team.

'Aiea is 4-0 this season.

"She can jump out of the gym, and being Samoan, she is strong," Yamamoto said. "There isn't a day that goes by that she doesn't nail one of her teammates. I heard some of the girls on the Mililani team call her 'The Beast.' "

Kleman-Maeva said that the discipline she learned from volleyball changed her life.

"I was rascal. I thought it was fun," she said. "I got busted in school. When I got to volleyball it was a different environment, it was so positive. When I got to learn the game, it was life; it was something I had to do. If I was going to do it, I knew I would have to be different."

She also picked up a second sport, soccer, as a sophomore.

Last season, she stopped two shots in the penalty-kicks portion of the OIA championship game, entering the game as a substitute for the gut-wrenching moment.

"I thought our starting goalkeeper was going to go in," she said. "When ('Aiea coach Gordon Matsuoka) called me, I was shocked. I was like, 'You want me to go in and stop the goals?' All the girls were encouraging me. I said if they believe in me, I can do it."

Yamamoto said a lot of Kleman-Maeva's intermediate school teachers have asked if she was the same person they knew.

"They said she was a terror, she wouldn't study, she wouldn't listen, she was a bully," Yamamoto said. "And now she is the perfect role model and student-athlete. She didn't have focus on anything, and I think volleyball, sports in general, has helped her.

"She's an all-around person, very good natured, very responsible. Her personality, she's always bubbly, pretty positive about everything."

Her bubbly personality was one of the reasons she was voted the school's Homecoming Queen.

"I'm not really outgoing for those things, everyone only knows me for sports," Kleman-Maeva said. "When the votes came out, I was like, 'Are you crazy?' Now I have to stand in front of a thousand people and dance, with a guy, in a dress, with makeup.

"This year I actually joined a school club, I ran for homecoming, I'm trying to do community service, I want to help around school. I think volleyball really helped my confidence."

Reach Leila Wai at lwai@honoluluadvertiser.com.