Julie Ann Willis
A trip from Portland to Maine may seem like a long way to go just to taste a crustacean, but not if you’re lobster-curious, highly competitive, love a good adventure, are traveling with the right partner and have a reliable…bicycle.
In other words, not if you’re Julie Willis (Cleveland, 1975)– and quite possibly no one else.
Willis was inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2025 for her achievements as an all-around athlete at Cleveland High, but that was just the beginning of her competitive exploits. In the years since, whether she was playing college basketball or winning cycling races or tending to the health of Olympians, Willis hasn’t had any problem finding ways to keep her life exciting and her heart rate elevated.
Willis grew up in southeast Portland and started playing sports a few years before Title IX leveled the field for girls interested in competing in organized athletics. But there were still plenty of ways to play, she says.
“Girls basketball wasn’t a PIL sport until I was a senior at Cleveland, but I had been playing both CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) softball and basketball since third grade at Sacred Heart Grade School,” Willis says. “Someone just put a ball in my hands, and I never looked back.”
She did, however, adjust her glasses in one of her first basketball games so she could look forward better, and that seemingly innocuous motion caught the eye of a woman who would later become one of the most important women in Willis’ life.
An Impressive Impression
“One of my first impressions playing basketball was seeing this formidable woman with gigantic hair and the most manicured nails on the planet,” Willis recalls with a laugh. “She’s a volunteer referee and she’s blowing her whistle and yelling. I mean she was a boss. At one point, my glasses slipped down my nose, so I pushed them up using my middle finger. Because it was the longest one! She thought I was flipping her off and called a technical foul on me.”
That misdirected whistle not withstanding, Willis quickly grew to revere Jan Watt, the future PIL Hall of Famer who in 1974 would become Cleveland’s first girls basketball coach and further endear herself to Willis for her “guidance and towering kindness and unwavering fight for fairness.”
Willis says only one woman had a stronger influence on her and that was Neva Heasty. “My mother was a formidable woman in her own right – athletic, brilliant, creative,” Willis says. “She raised me by herself and was my grade school coach. She didn’t like to lose and demanded a lot of me, but never more than I demanded of myself.”
Willis got her introduction to baseball by shagging balls for her older brother Jimmy’s teams (she also has a younger brother, Jon). When she wasn’t doing that, she says, “I was playing catch with my best friend, Judy Schoepp, or throwing a ball against a wall and imagining playing full games.”
At age 8, she was able to play softball for the first time at Sacred Heart. “It just clicked,” she says. “I loved the game.”
By age 11 she had advanced from the Portland Public Schools girls league to the Portland Lancers in the women’s B league, where she competed for playing time with women 10 and more years her seniors.
“I was really young and wound up sitting on the bench for a whole year, but I learned how to keep score in the process,” Willis says.
That skill would come in handy once she got to Cleveland and met future PIL Hall of Fame coach Jerry Gatto, who invited her to keep score for his varsity baseball team.
“I was, like, ‘Yesssssss.’ I loved that scorebook, and I also had a crush on some of the players. So now I had an excuse to be at all the games,” she says, laughing. “But it was also something to do until I could play softball.”
Father Figure Steps Up
That never happened at Cleveland. Even though Title IX legislation had passed in 1972, softball wouldn’t become a PIL sport until after Willis graduated. Instead, she continued playing for the Lancers in the Portland Metro Softball League and for another coach who would be a major influence in her young life.
“My softball coach was Harold Woolsey,” she says. “Mr. Woolsey stepped in not just as a coach but almost as a father figure.”
In Willis’ senior year, Woolsey was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor that “took him very quickly,” she says. “That was the end of softball for me."
From 1971 to 1973, Willis played CYO basketball for another beloved coach, Dick Pine, but once it became a PIL sport in 1974, she was reunited on Cleveland’s first-ever team with Watt, the commanding, meticulously manicured referee from her grade school days. As a senior she would be named 1st Team All-PIL, adding another honor to the all-star award she collected in 1973 playing shortstop for the Lancers.
“The awards aren’t what I think about when I look back,”says Willis, who also earned two track and field letters throwing the javelin and played a year of volleyball once a program was started at Cleveland. “I just wanted to get better whatever I was playing. I never wanted to disappoint Dick Pine or Jan Watt or Harold Woolsey. They always believed in me, and I loved them so deeply.”
As much as she enjoyed winning, Willis says seeing improvement in her and her teammates skills was even better.
“It felt so good when we would all learn and get it as a team, and in basketball Jan was the vessel for that,” she says. “She had a knack for being able to address us as a group but understanding us as individuals and young women. She really knew how to tweak what each of us was doing so we could grow together as a team.”
Life-Changing Opportunity
Basketball wasn’t just a fun sport, Willis adds, it was a life changer. Her skills attracted the attention of Whitman College in Walla Walla, which offered her a financial aid package in exchange for playing on the respected private school’s first basketball team.
“Who knows what direction I would have gone in if not for Whitman,” she says.
Willis played as a freshman on a team composed primarily of inexperienced players but left the team her sophomore and junior years to concentrate on academics.
“I was overwhelmed trying to combine sports and athletics in college,” she says.
Willis got back on the court her senior year after she had adjusted to the academic demands. “Once, I started playing again, basketball was more fun than ever.”
After she graduated, Willis found another sport to love. She moved back to Portland, bought a bike and hit the road with a cycling boyfriend she’d met in college. “He would ride from Seattle to Portland to date me; imagine how charmed I was,” she says.
In 1980, the couple got the wild idea to “bike to Maine and eat lobster,” or at least that’s the story Willis has been sticking to all these years.
“I’d never had lobster before, so that’s just what I’ve always told people,” she cracks. “I had no flippin’ idea what I was getting into.”
The trip took seven weeks and the duo lived off “Top Ramen, mac and cheese and hot dog,” Willis says. And, of course, one highly anticipated lobster.
“I didn’t like it,” she says, laughing. “I’ve never eaten it again.”
Racing Ahead
Back in Oregon, Willis eventually got involved in the Bend mountain biking community and started entering races, doing well enough to land an entry-fee sponsorship from Bridgestone.
“The first year I won pretty much everything I entered,” she says. “I became insanely committed. I didn’t have a coach. I just went out and rode all the time while working in the resort scene.”
Willis raced from 1984 to 1988. In 1985, she placed fifth in the Mammoth Mountain Downhill World Championships and third at the National OffRoad Bicycling Association Championship.
During that period, she says she was always trying to figureout what she was going to do with her life and “How I could help save the world.” Then a pre-race massage brought her next career move into sharp focus.
“I had that massage and it was a wow moment,” she says. “I realized that from both the medical and spiritual standpoints, this was a way I could try to save the world one person at a time.”
Willis and her boyfriend moved to Salt Lake City (where both still live and remain close friends) and she returned to school to study massage therapy and human anatomy. After completing her studies, she got the opportunity to intern with the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. That began a relationship that continued for 10 years and grew to include the U.S. men’s and women’s cycling teams and the Canadian men’s and women’s ski and cycling teams. (Read more about her experience with the Olympics teams on her Hall of Fame bio page.)
In the years since, Willis has practiced massage therapy in Salt Lake City and the nearby resort town of Alta. She took a five-year break around the COVID years to work as a private chef.
In early February 2025, Willis returned to Portland to be inducted into the Cleveland High Hall of Fame. As happy as she was about that honor, she seemed almost as thrilled that the Cleveland girls basketball team upset Grant on the same night she and five former teammates were inducted. That and one more thing.
“I even shot a basket with the girls during warm-ups,” she adds.
And?
“Swish.”
Do you know Julie Ann Willis? If you’d like to reconnect,she can be reached at juliewillis@me.com
For profile comments or suggestions for future profilecandidates, contact ralanbaltus@gmail.com
Member Spotlight
A trip from Portland to Maine may seem like a long way to go just to taste a crustacean, but not if you’re lobster-curious, highly competitive, love a good adventure, are traveling with the right partner and have a reliable…bicycle.
In other words, not if you’re Julie Willis (Cleveland, 1975)– and quite possibly no one else.
Willis was inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2025 for her achievements as an all-around athlete at Cleveland High, but that was just the beginning of her competitive exploits. In the years since, whether she was playing college basketball or winning cycling races or tending to the health of Olympians, Willis hasn’t had any problem finding ways to keep her life exciting and her heart rate elevated.
Willis grew up in southeast Portland and started playing sports a few years before Title IX leveled the field for girls interested in competing in organized athletics. But there were still plenty of ways to play, she says.
“Girls basketball wasn’t a PIL sport until I was a senior at Cleveland, but I had been playing both CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) softball and basketball since third grade at Sacred Heart Grade School,” Willis says. “Someone just put a ball in my hands, and I never looked back.”
She did, however, adjust her glasses in one of her first basketball games so she could look forward better, and that seemingly innocuous motion caught the eye of a woman who would later become one of the most important women in Willis’ life.
An Impressive Impression
“One of my first impressions playing basketball was seeing this formidable woman with gigantic hair and the most manicured nails on the planet,” Willis recalls with a laugh. “She’s a volunteer referee and she’s blowing her whistle and yelling. I mean she was a boss. At one point, my glasses slipped down my nose, so I pushed them up using my middle finger. Because it was the longest one! She thought I was flipping her off and called a technical foul on me.”
That misdirected whistle not withstanding, Willis quickly grew to revere Jan Watt, the future PIL Hall of Famer who in 1974 would become Cleveland’s first girls basketball coach and further endear herself to Willis for her “guidance and towering kindness and unwavering fight for fairness.”
Willis says only one woman had a stronger influence on her and that was Neva Heasty. “My mother was a formidable woman in her own right – athletic, brilliant, creative,” Willis says. “She raised me by herself and was my grade school coach. She didn’t like to lose and demanded a lot of me, but never more than I demanded of myself.”
Willis got her introduction to baseball by shagging balls for her older brother Jimmy’s teams (she also has a younger brother, Jon). When she wasn’t doing that, she says, “I was playing catch with my best friend, Judy Schoepp, or throwing a ball against a wall and imagining playing full games.”
At age 8, she was able to play softball for the first time at Sacred Heart. “It just clicked,” she says. “I loved the game.”
By age 11 she had advanced from the Portland Public Schools girls league to the Portland Lancers in the women’s B league, where she competed for playing time with women 10 and more years her seniors.
“I was really young and wound up sitting on the bench for a whole year, but I learned how to keep score in the process,” Willis says.
That skill would come in handy once she got to Cleveland and met future PIL Hall of Fame coach Jerry Gatto, who invited her to keep score for his varsity baseball team.
“I was, like, ‘Yesssssss.’ I loved that scorebook, and I also had a crush on some of the players. So now I had an excuse to be at all the games,” she says, laughing. “But it was also something to do until I could play softball.”
Father Figure Steps Up
That never happened at Cleveland. Even though Title IX legislation had passed in 1972, softball wouldn’t become a PIL sport until after Willis graduated. Instead, she continued playing for the Lancers in the Portland Metro Softball League and for another coach who would be a major influence in her young life.
“My softball coach was Harold Woolsey,” she says. “Mr. Woolsey stepped in not just as a coach but almost as a father figure.”
In Willis’ senior year, Woolsey was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor that “took him very quickly,” she says. “That was the end of softball for me."
From 1971 to 1973, Willis played CYO basketball for another beloved coach, Dick Pine, but once it became a PIL sport in 1974, she was reunited on Cleveland’s first-ever team with Watt, the commanding, meticulously manicured referee from her grade school days. As a senior she would be named 1st Team All-PIL, adding another honor to the all-star award she collected in 1973 playing shortstop for the Lancers.
“The awards aren’t what I think about when I look back,”says Willis, who also earned two track and field letters throwing the javelin and played a year of volleyball once a program was started at Cleveland. “I just wanted to get better whatever I was playing. I never wanted to disappoint Dick Pine or Jan Watt or Harold Woolsey. They always believed in me, and I loved them so deeply.”
As much as she enjoyed winning, Willis says seeing improvement in her and her teammates skills was even better.
“It felt so good when we would all learn and get it as a team, and in basketball Jan was the vessel for that,” she says. “She had a knack for being able to address us as a group but understanding us as individuals and young women. She really knew how to tweak what each of us was doing so we could grow together as a team.”
Life-Changing Opportunity
Basketball wasn’t just a fun sport, Willis adds, it was a life changer. Her skills attracted the attention of Whitman College in Walla Walla, which offered her a financial aid package in exchange for playing on the respected private school’s first basketball team.
“Who knows what direction I would have gone in if not for Whitman,” she says.
Willis played as a freshman on a team composed primarily of inexperienced players but left the team her sophomore and junior years to concentrate on academics.
“I was overwhelmed trying to combine sports and athletics in college,” she says.
Willis got back on the court her senior year after she had adjusted to the academic demands. “Once, I started playing again, basketball was more fun than ever.”
After she graduated, Willis found another sport to love. She moved back to Portland, bought a bike and hit the road with a cycling boyfriend she’d met in college. “He would ride from Seattle to Portland to date me; imagine how charmed I was,” she says.
In 1980, the couple got the wild idea to “bike to Maine and eat lobster,” or at least that’s the story Willis has been sticking to all these years.
“I’d never had lobster before, so that’s just what I’ve always told people,” she cracks. “I had no flippin’ idea what I was getting into.”
The trip took seven weeks and the duo lived off “Top Ramen, mac and cheese and hot dog,” Willis says. And, of course, one highly anticipated lobster.
“I didn’t like it,” she says, laughing. “I’ve never eaten it again.”
Racing Ahead
Back in Oregon, Willis eventually got involved in the Bend mountain biking community and started entering races, doing well enough to land an entry-fee sponsorship from Bridgestone.
“The first year I won pretty much everything I entered,” she says. “I became insanely committed. I didn’t have a coach. I just went out and rode all the time while working in the resort scene.”
Willis raced from 1984 to 1988. In 1985, she placed fifth in the Mammoth Mountain Downhill World Championships and third at the National OffRoad Bicycling Association Championship.
During that period, she says she was always trying to figureout what she was going to do with her life and “How I could help save the world.” Then a pre-race massage brought her next career move into sharp focus.
“I had that massage and it was a wow moment,” she says. “I realized that from both the medical and spiritual standpoints, this was a way I could try to save the world one person at a time.”
Willis and her boyfriend moved to Salt Lake City (where both still live and remain close friends) and she returned to school to study massage therapy and human anatomy. After completing her studies, she got the opportunity to intern with the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. That began a relationship that continued for 10 years and grew to include the U.S. men’s and women’s cycling teams and the Canadian men’s and women’s ski and cycling teams. (Read more about her experience with the Olympics teams on her Hall of Fame bio page.)
In the years since, Willis has practiced massage therapy in Salt Lake City and the nearby resort town of Alta. She took a five-year break around the COVID years to work as a private chef.
In early February 2025, Willis returned to Portland to be inducted into the Cleveland High Hall of Fame. As happy as she was about that honor, she seemed almost as thrilled that the Cleveland girls basketball team upset Grant on the same night she and five former teammates were inducted. That and one more thing.
“I even shot a basket with the girls during warm-ups,” she adds.
And?
“Swish.”
Do you know Julie Ann Willis? If you’d like to reconnect,she can be reached at juliewillis@me.com
For profile comments or suggestions for future profilecandidates, contact ralanbaltus@gmail.com
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