With Jamie Houston it has never been a question of if she would be good but when, followed by when again?

She has soared over huge obstacles, to say nothing of huge blocks, to bring the sixth-ranked Rainbow Wahine within shouting distance of volleyball's final four, twice in her first three years. Houston, a senior hitter from Huntsville, Ala., is the terminator every elite team needs, down to the awed expressions of opponents diving in her wake.

One question remains as Hawai'i tries to extend its hold on the Western Athletic Conference championship to 11 years while hosting the WAC Tournament this week: Can Houston rise to her remarkably high level from here on out without taking another fall?

She is the one who rode tears of faith from a pre-match chapel meeting to an astonishing postseason performance against Texas her freshman year in Austin. There would be 20 kills in 34 swings, mostly up and over the nation's biggest block.

"I hadn't played volleyball that long and I was nervous, but God is a big part of my life and he's brought me through all this," Houston recalled. "I don't think I would be the player I am if I didn't get to know Him as well as I did."

A year later, she took her excellence out on USC, ending the fifth-seeded Trojans' season in a regional semifinal here with a career-high 35 kills on .397 hitting, with 16 digs and five stuffs.

"Houston," said USC coach Mick Haley in hushed tones, "went off tonight."

As a sophomore, she was sixth in the country, averaging 5.49 kills a set. Last year she was second, at 5.51. There have been many, many eye-popping performances, in particular her latest streak that has her hitting .491 in six of the last seven matches. But the puka in that surge is telling.

Houston hit negative-.043 at Idaho 11 days ago. She can be spectacular, and spectacularly wild, sometimes between the ooh and the aah.

"It's all about her timing," UH coach Dave Shoji said. "When her timing is on, then she's tremendous. If her timing is a little bit off then she struggles and tries to compensate and tries too hard and it gets away from her. It's mostly mental."

Houston and associate coach Mike Sealy describe it as split personalities — polar opposites.

"One is the good personality and one is the red personality," Houston explains.

Red?

"Red," she repeats. "That's fierce. That's when I get in trouble. Red gets me in trouble."

"It's a mood she gets in," Sealy explained. "She has a split personality when she plays. I was asking her if it comes on slowly or she feels it building up. We wanted to work on her recognizing it as it's coming to try and stop it before it manifests itself. I asked her to put a color to it — what she feels when that persona comes out. She said red. When we see her going down that path we call out red and do something to stop it.

"This all happened before we started double days. She had a rough spring at the new position (opposite the setter). She saw it as a demotion as opposed to building our offense around her strengths."

"Red Jamie" sends free balls into the bleachers, forgets where to go and, for some mysterious reason, hits a tight set with her left (off) hand clear across the court, into the floor two feet from the net — out of bounds. It can happen against the best of teams at the worst of times and the worst of teams at completely inconsequential times.

There are days when Houston simply cannot snap out of it. She will be the first to tell you that, and accept blame.

"It's mostly that I'm over-amped," she says simply. "I talk to myself. I do get over-amped. I just need to calm down."

When it happens, her teammates and coaches encourage and Houston searches deep within, often with a little grin to hide her frustration. It makes her appear to not care. Nothing could be further from the truth. Shoji calls that grin a "defense mechanism." She has come out of tough practices in tears and is harder on herself than all her head-shaking fans put together.

It only adds to her aura in this week's WAC Tournament.

"Her mediocre is everybody else's awfully good," Utah State coach Grayson DuBose said. "She hit .390 against us and buried a couple balls and I thought, 'Wow, she is a lot of fun to watch.' I don't want to see it too much, of course.

"She can get up and attack the ball at a different height than we've seen. ... I watched Penn State and they can get up and attack at a different level and she is right there. Something big is going to happen when she hits. She will take a crack and it's going to be real good or real bad."

Houston at her best is as good as anyone Hawai'i has ever seen, including Olympic medalists Teee Williams and Kim Willoughby — the only player who left Manoa with more kills. She can touch 10 foot 7 and dominate for days. She played for the National A2 team the past two years and has earned every honor but the two most coveted: NCAA champion and first-team All-American.

Those over-amped "red" streaks have kept her from playing to a potential her team might only truly know. While Williams (.344) and Willoughby (.339) left UH among the Top 10 in career hitting percentage, Houston hovers around .260.

"I've seen her two years now," Sealy said the beginning of this season. "I've seen her as an international all-world hitter. I've seen her hold her own in passing formation. And I've seen her just dominate backrow. At the same time, I've seen her struggle hitting, miss very easy digs and struggle passing. With her, it's all from the neck up. We're trying to quiet her mind and stay focused in the present and fly."

Her teammates witness it almost everyday. Freshmen Stephanie Ferrell sees Houston as a mentor. She finds her athleticism "inspirational," but is most drawn to her "silly" sense of humor and sensitivity.

Kari Gregory, a senior on the team last year, has been friends with "Huey" since Houston broke down into the splits at Tara Hittle's birthday party during her recruiting visit. Gregory roomed with Houston on the road and tells her she is the sister she never had.

Early in Houston's career, Gregory worried she might not find the college balance between academics, athletics and life outside all that. That is no longer a concern. Houston matured through a long relationship with former UH football player Davone Bess and after a shaky academic start. "Red Jamie" does not appear off the volleyball court, where she exudes just as much confidence as when she is playing, without the hiccups.

"She's grown into it," Gregory said. "At first she didn't realize how much school was part of this. That's something every college student has to go through. But that's the pleasure of having a freshman year. You have one year to mess up and test it and now I believe she is one of the top academic players on the team, which is great. I'm extremely proud of the woman she has become. She has a really big heart people don't always see."

Houston could have graduated this semester, but chose to get her sociology degree next May and devote more time to her senior season before playing professionally and, ideally, with the national team. She was up late in August watching Olympic volleyball with all those Hawai'i players, thinking "It's cool. That's where I want to be."

She could be playing in Puerto Rico soon, or any number of countries. She knows she will eventually move back to the South. Her father has been successful in real estate, a career that appeals to her. For now though, she won't allow herself to think beyond volleyball.

Houston's career has been remarkable, for the sheer number of her kills and athleticism of her all-around game, to the intimidation and frustration she has forced on opponents the last three-plus seasons.

She is also incredibly resilient, by any definition. She has never missed a match because of injury and has proved, more times than she or Shoji want to count, she can fight back from futility.

Her ability to bounce back has been tested like maybe no other healthy Rainbow Wahine. It is most evident in the relentless practices, when she transforms a bad day into an extraordinary one simply because she doesn't want to be on the losing side and have to run.

Multiply that by the opportunity to win an 11th consecutive WAC championship and have a fighting chance at a national championship her final year and you have an idea of what is on her mind at this point in her life.

It is much different than eight years ago, when Houston's middle school basketball coach introduced her to volleyball Olympian Rose Magers-Powell. "I thought volleyball was kind of boring then," Houston recalled. "I didn't really get to 'body' anybody like basketball. "I was like, 'Why am I standing here waiting for the ball to come to me?'"

Soon after, she found herself wanting to be like Magers, who still coaches in Alabama. Houston made her recruiting visit to Manoa to watch Senior Night 2003, when All-Americans Willoughby and Lily Kahumoku were buried in lei. She remembers being amazed that anyone "could be that into volleyball."

Next Friday, she, Tara Hittle, Jessica Keefe and Nickie Thomas will star in Senior Night 2008. Houston will leave with an impact on the record book similar to Willoughby and Kahumoku. Only hers will have that erratic twist that has, not coincidentally, become more obvious with the absence of All-America setter Kanoe Kamana'o.

Shoji describes his terminator as "a very diverse, complex individual that has a lot of stuff going on," and a penchant for Skittles. It has been an adventure.

"She has such an engaging personality that she can really do a lot of things in the future," Shoji said. "When she finds something else she is passionate about she will be really good at it. I think she's under-appreciated."

That could change in the next month. No one would appreciate it more than Houston.