California Girl Image Masks a ‘Very Cuban’ Stone : CSUN Volleyball Transfer Holds Dear Her Caribbean Island Heritage

Watching Aimee Stone practice with her Cal State Northridge teammates, it is easy to assume the junior outside hitter from Thousand Oaks High is your stereotypical woman volleyball player.

At 5-feet-10 and 160 pounds, she is tall, strong and athletic, and clad in turquoise shorts and a black T-shirt, the green-eyed blonde fits the image of someone who grew up playing volleyball on the beaches of Southern California.

But her looks, like some of her shots at net, are deceiving. Stone is half Cuban and speaks Spanish fluently.

Fact is she spoke Spanish before she spoke English, having spent much of her childhood in the care of her Cuban-born grandmother while her mother worked.

“I feel American and I love America,” Stone said. “But I also feel very Cuban. Growing up, we celebrated most of the holidays in a very Cuban way with the music, the food and all of the traditions, so that is a big part of my culture and background.”

Stone’s mother, the former Maria Travieso, left Cuba in 1961 after her father, Ramon, grew disillusioned with the direction the country was headed under President Fidel Castro.

Ramon, a district attorney in the Caribbean seaport of Santiago de Cuba, supported Castro when he took over the country in 1959, but within two years he came to believe that Castro was turning his back on the people who helped put him in power.

Moving his wife, son and three daughters to the United States was not a matter to be taken lightly, however. Cuba’s restrictive emigration policy forced members of the Travieso family to leave the country one by one.

After arriving in Miami with “absolutely nothing,” 16-year-old Maria stayed for a month with her sister, Maruja, and one of their aunts before moving to Chicago to live with another aunt.

In Illinois, she met and married Alan Stone, and gave birth to son Michael, 24, and Aimee, 20.

The family moved to Thousand Oaks when Aimee was 3, and after getting a divorce, Maria married Steven Miller.

Miller, like Alan Stone, is white, but Maria quips that after 16 years of marriage, he’s half Cuban.

“(My family) went through a lot of tough times when we first came to the United States, and he understands that,” Maria said. “We didn’t have any money and we didn’t speak English, but we always had a strong faith that things were going to get better.”

Aimee Stone was a multidimensional athlete as a youngster, competing in gymnastics, track and field, swimming, basketball and volleyball before focusing on the latter during her final two years at Thousand Oaks High.

“I don’t think athletics were really that important to her during her first couple of years in high school,” Thousand Oaks volleyball Coach Ron Beick said. “It wasn’t until the summer between her sophomore and junior year that she started playing club volleyball and really devoted herself to the sport.”

Despite her relatively late start, Stone earned All-Marmonte League honors as a senior before accepting an athletic scholarship to Colorado State.

Several other schools, including Oregon State and Washington, were interested in Stone, but she had her heart set on attending the Western Athletic Conference school.

“I didn’t know anybody there and I didn’t know anything about the coach or the program,” Stone said. “But I saw some brochures on the school at one of those college seminars and wanted to go there.”

The recruiting trip to the scenic Fort Collins campus strengthened her initial feelings, but she became painfully homesick once school started. She often would call home three times a day, and each time she came home to visit it was harder to leave.

“It got to the point where she would have tears in her eyes when she was at the airport,” Maria said. “She was just like a little child who was going away from her family for the first time.”

Stone said the homesickness, lack of playing time and a dearth of competitive intensity on the Colorado State team prompted her to transfer to Northridge last summer after two years in Colorado.

Financial considerations might have played a part in the move too; Colorado State Coach Rich Feller offered Stone’s scholarship to another player after she flunked out of school after three semesters.

Although Stone regained her eligibility by taking classes in Colorado State’s continuing education program, she would have been a non-scholarship player for the Rams this season.

“I felt bad about having to pull the scholarship from her,” Feller said. “She’s one of my favorite people, but we had no way of knowing last December that she would be eligible in August.”

Stone knew very little about Northridge when she decided to transfer there, and she was unaware of the turmoil surrounding the resignation of Coach Walt Ker after his 14th season.

Ker resigned in January, citing, “family considerations.”

A short time later, it was learned that Ker’s departure came after two Northridge players filed a written complaint accusing him of sexual harassment. Other former players also alleged that in the early 1980s Ker had consensual sexual relations with team members.

John Price, who guided Northridge to a runner-up finish in the NCAA men’s championships in May, replaced Ker on a one-year interim basis after the four finalists for the job declined the position.

“I didn’t know about Walt, but it didn’t really matter,” Stone said. “I just figured new coach, new player, we’re just going to hit it off.”

Price, who heard about Stone through Feller, didn’t know what to expect.

“I did not realize how good a player I was getting,” he said. “I was just hoping that she would be able to contend for a starting spot, but it was obvious from the start that she could hit the ball.”

Stone, who is averaging a school-record 4.20 kills a game, does more that just hit the ball. She attacks it with a ferocity that seldom has been seen at Northridge.

Her aggressiveness can be a liability at times, however, because she usually attempts to hammer the ball through blocks--instead of hitting around them--no matter how well they’re set up.

“Sometimes, she could make better decisions as an attacker,” Price said. “But she just blasts away time after time. . . . But it’s hard to criticize her too much. I think the women’s game would be a lot more exciting if there were more players who hit like Aimee.”

Blocking and passing are two areas in which Stone could improve greatly.

Price said that although Stone leads the team in digs, she still is baffled at times by the opposition’s offense.

“There are times when she is a little slow in recognizing what is going on,” he said. “We just haven’t worked on that a whole lot in practice.”

An inability to transfer spirited efforts in practice to match play has frustrated Price and his players this season.

After qualifying for the NCAA Division I playoffs for the first time last year, the Matadors had visions of a return engagement, but they have an 11-16 record with two matches left in the regular season.

“It’s been so frustrating you almost want to cry sometimes,” Stone said. “You almost hate what you’re doing because you’re so mad. . . . I personally don’t understand why we don’t play better in matches. I think that we just get down when the other team gets a rally going. We just kind of think, ‘Oh, man, here they go again. We’re going to lose.’ ”

Despite the losses, Stone hopes the Matadors can conclude the regular season with victories at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on Friday and at home against San Jose State on Saturday, and earn a berth in the National Invitational Volleyball Championships in Kansas City, Mo., from Dec. 3-5.

As for the future, Stone will be a senior at Northridge next year on a team that should have all six starters returning. She wants to continue playing after college but is unsure how she will measure up against the nation’s elite players.

“I don’t know how good I am compared to those women on the national team,” Stone said. “I know they are excellent athletes, but I would love to give it a shot.”

If a stint on the national team fails to pan out, she plans to launch into a career as a teacher and volleyball coach.

If she ends up teaching in Southern California--or in the Southwest for that matter--her bilingual background will be a big asset--as well as a reason to give people pause.

“It’s always fun to see how people react when they find out I speak Spanish,” Stone said, laughing. “They see the blond hair and the green eyes and they can’t believe it.”