September 12, 2026
By Tess Hubbard and Andrew Koening, Columbia Missourian
Hickman hosted its annual volleyball tournament Saturday. This year, it was combined with the inaugural Aiyanna Williams Invitational Volleyball Tournament.
Derek Kent owns CrossFit Verus, the gym where Williams’ mother, Phyllis Williams, works as a trainer. For the one-year anniversary of Aiyanna Williams’ passing, he wanted to do something meaningful and positive that could bring the community together. His idea developed into the creation of the tournament in Williams’ name.
“I was at a volleyball tournament of my daughter’s in the winter time,” Kent said. “Phyllis was on my mind and on my heart, and I’m sitting there watching volleyball, and I was thinking about her daughter Aiyanna, who played volleyball, and the idea just popped in my mind.”
At the tournament, Adonica Coleman, executive director for the Day Dreams Foundation, shared information about a scholarship the organization announced in June that honors Williams. The scholarship will be given to a graduating high school senior to support them in their postgraduate plans.
“What our team is looking for really is people who embody Aiyanna’s spirit,” Coleman said. “They don’t have to be a 4.0 honor student. No, they’re looking for people who do service to their community, to their family, to their neighbors. They’re looking for somebody who interacts with their teammates with kindness and somebody who’s about community and who has perseverance.”
During Coleman’s speech between the pool and tournament brackets, she also introduced a new Spirit of Aiyanna Award for the tournament. The award recognizes a player who “demonstrates the positive, encouraging spirit” of Williams, including attitude and kindness on and off the court.
“This, actually, was not in today’s agenda, but earlier this morning Aiyanna’s mother, Phyllis, noticed a young lady that caught her attention,” Coleman explained. “She was up on the table, cheering, encouraging her teammates, and bringing incredible energy to her team, and Phyllis said, ‘that’s the spirit of Aiyanna.’”
The first the Spirit of Aiyanna Award was given to Tolton senior Ainsley Gillaspie.
In order to have the inaugural Aiyanna Williams Invitational Volleyball Tournament and host it alongside the annual Hickman Volleyball Tournament, support from athletic director Jennifer Caine was needed. Caine, who was Williams’ volleyball coach at Battle High School, welcomed the idea.
“This is a really great event for a very unfortunate reason, and so to be a part of it is an honor, but, again, I wish that we weren’t celebrating the life of this young person under these circumstances,” Caine said. “But I hope that it can shed light and we can celebrate the spirit of Aiyanna moving forward and we can continue to bring awareness to these kind of events in a way that, hopefully at some point in time, we’re celebrating more lives of young people in the opposite way.”
While the tournaments were combined this year, organizers hope to have the tournament honoring Williams expand on its own in the future.
“Our hope is that we can grow this tournament and that we can bring more teams, local and from across the state, bring them into our great community of Columbia and be hospitable and host and simply play volleyball,” Kent said. … “And also every year raise a significant amount of money to help fund this scholarship.”