Kaila Hulls finds her own stripes

Assembly Hall sits empty and quiet, except for the people part of the IU women’s basketball team.

It’s a Monday, and it’s the first day of official practice of the 2013-14 season.

Two years ago, redshirt sophomore forward Kaila Hulls never expected to be here on this court or to be part of this team.

In a competitive drill with defenders, Hulls dribbles to her left, with her all-black brace on her right knee trailing behind.

Her teammates start to count down as the drill nears its end: “10, nine, eight, seven.”

Last year, Hulls never made it this far into the season. She was already watching on the sidelines in August.

“Six, five, four.”

Entering her third year of college, Hulls, a projected starter who is expected to be a scoring contributor for the team, had not yet played a collegiate game.

She makes her way to the left elbow, just inside the 3-point line.

“Three, two.”

She raises up off the ground with her eyes locked onto the basket and takes her shot, tucking her elbow in to maintain perfect form. The ball flies straight through the hoop, the net making the sound indicative of a perfect shot.

Her teammates rejoice. Hulls doesn’t acknowledge it. Watching her, you’d think nothing note-worthy just happened. She simply gets in line to do the next drill. She’s used to hitting shots like that.

She’s dreamt of knocking down shots like that in this arena since she was a young girl.

And for the past four years, she’s watched from the sideline so many times as her brother, Jordan, made shots like that.

Now, it’s finally her turn.

* * *

Kaila found herself in a familiar situation March 5. She was at Assembly Hall watching Jordan.

It was Senior Night. Eight members of the Hulls family stood alongside Jordan as he gave his goodbye speech to the 17,472 people in the stands.

She was wearing his No. 1 white Indiana jersey with red lettering and a black zip-up hoodie over it. Ever since she was a little girl, Kaila has wanted to be like him.

After four years, Jordan left IU ranked No. 26 all-time in scoring in school history and second all-time in 3-point field goals made. He played in more games in an IU uniform than anyone before.

Two years older than her, he’s been her role model. She’s gone so many places where she’s been “Jordan’s sister.”

“Some people probably think that’s my name,” she said.

But on this night, she’s not just Jordan’s little sister. After all, their relationship is much deeper than that.

And she’s a much better basketball player than just his little sister.

“Kaila, my little sister — my best friend,” Jordan says in his speech to the fans, dropping his head as he starts to break down. His voice softens, squeaking out the words while the tears start to flow down his face.

He’s going through and individually thanking each member of his family, but this is one of his most emotional points in a teary-eyed thank you to his family that he says meant so much to him and his development.

Upon hearing that first sentence about her, Kaila’s hands dart to her face, covering her mouth and nose. With her eyes squinting, she’s crying, too.

Months later she says she cried because “best friend” summarizes their entire lives together. When she tries to explain their relationship, she can’t, admitting that she’s on the verge of crying just thinking about it. As her role model, she says it was a moment of pride for her, too.

“She’s gone through a lot,” Jordan continues in his speech. “Knee surgeries. She’s just as good a basketball player that I am.”

He turns his head to his right, talking directly to Kaila.

“I’m still taller than you, though, so don’t forget that.”

He turns back to the crowd.

“They think she’s taller than me and that she’s a better shooter and all this stuff. I just say that to make her feel good, but honestly, it’s not true.”

Back to Kaila.

“I love you very much. Thanks for always being there for me.”

* * *

Growing up in the Hulls family in Bloomington, it was naturally assumed that you would play basketball.

Kaila’s grandfather, John, coached at Indiana as part of Bob Knight’s staff. Her brother Jay, who is nine years older, played Amateur Athletic Union basketball, and the family always traveled to his games.

“We all just got thrown into it. It was literally part of the family,” Kaila said. “My dad put a basketball in my hands, and I sort of just went with it.”

She started playing organized ball when she was 6. When she was 8, she played her favorite season of basketball.

She got to play on Jordan’s team.

“Honestly,” she said, “I just wanted to be like Jordan.”

She played on the boys team two years up. Growing up, she always wanted to play with the boys.

On that team, she caught passes from Jordan, who was initially taught to pass first. She took all of the shots, he got all of the assists.

“I mean, we fought sometimes, but it didn’t matter,” she said. “As long as we won, we were both happy.”

They fought about who got to shoot and who had to make the passes. It was nothing big, and thinking back on it, Kaila is forced into a light-hearted chuckle.

Jordan grew up an IU fan, which meant Kaila grew up an IU fan. It was the hometown school, and Kaila said pretty much everyone in the family went there.

“I always wanted to wear the candy stripe pants,” she said. “It’s every little kid’s dream in Bloomington to play in those.”

The preparation started in the Hulls’ driveway on a Goalrilla basketball hoop. She and Jordan would practice on that hoop and play one-on-one all the time. They started at a young age, lowering the adjustable hoop to below 10-feet.

But soon, Jordan would raise it to the regulation height. And when he started playing on that, Kaila did, too, at about age 8, she says.

Jordan would go on to win Mr. Basketball at Bloomington South, leading the team to a 26-0 record and a state championship his senior season.

His college decision was easy. He was going to IU.

It wouldn’t be that easy for Kaila.

* * *

Kaila hates being called “Jordan’s sister.”

“She likes to keep it on the DL because she wants to be Kaila and not known as Jordy’s sister,” said Nicole Bell, one of Kaila’s teammates who also lived in her suite at Briscoe last year. “So hopefully everyone starts to know Jordan as Kaila’s brother, because I know sometimes it bothers her.”

After Kaila’s freshman year of high school, IU offered her a basketball scholarship. As a 15-year-old, it was too early for her to make that decision.

But by the time her senior year came around in 2011 and she had earned All-State honors, IU still made her final three choices.

Her dad, J.C., made her do a pro and con list for every school she was considering. She wasn’t sure how she’d fit into IU’s system, but she also knew she’d continue to be “Jordan’s sister.”

“I don’t want people to know me as Jordan’s little sister. I want them to know me as Kaila,” she said. “It was tough. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s awesome being Jordan’s sister. I wouldn’t change it. But at the same time, it does get hard because I don’t want to be known as that.”

She knew she couldn’t go to IU. She’d put away her dreams for the candy stripes.

Narrowing it down to Butler and Bowling Green, she chose the Falcons, despite the school being four and a half hours away — the furthest away she had ever been from her family.

“I knew that even though it was far away, I had to kind of separate myself and go my own direction,” she said.

“It was hard to leave, but at the same time, I knew that if I would’ve came here at the very beginning, I would’ve always lived under the shadow of Jordan’s sister. I would just always be under him. That’s not bad. I’m not ashamed of it. I kind of wanted to make a name for myself, and I knew that’d be very difficult if I came here at the very beginning.”

But it wasn’t easy being that far away.

It was even harder when the game she loves so much was taken away from her as a freshman.

* * *

When Kaila is practicing, she’s not joking around.

Her eyes are wide, and she’s always listening to the coach and engaged in the play, even when she’s not in.

She stands by herself, quietly observing. She rarely smiles.

She’s not the person screaming in the middle of the huddle. She’s not the one yelling encouragement during conditioning.

If there’s a break in the action, she might crack a quick joke and steal a quick laugh with Bell or forward Claire Jakubicek, another one of her roommates from last year in Briscoe.

Basketball is what brought the three friends together.

Last year in that dorm, the three girls would have “jam sessions” where they’d blast Justin Beiber songs, such as “Boyfriend” and “That Should Be Me,” and sing and dance. Bell and Jakubicek note that Kaila is a different person off the court. She’s relaxed and funny and laughs a lot.

But not when she’s on the court. There, it’s all business.

Her calling card is her 3-point shot. On the first day of practice for the 2013 season, she gets in on 5-on-5 action. Immediately, she flashes with both hands up in a ready position, open behind the 3-point line.

“Woo! Woo!” she yells, trying to call for the ball.

Once she gets it, she shoots. This time, it’s a rare miss.

The next time she gets the ball behind the line, she doesn’t miss. The ball only touches the net on its way through the hoop. Swoosh.

* * *

Four days after the first practice of the 2013-14 season at Hoosier Hysteria, Kaila runs onto the court by herself as “This is Indiana” plays in the background with about 10,000 fans yelling for her. She gets the biggest applause of any women’s basketball player as she is introduced as the “homegrown product from Bloomington, Indiana.”

“It’s always special to get a crowd applause like that,” she said. “But I would have to give it to my brother because he’s probably the reason why I got it.”

At Hoosier Hysteria, Kaila is competing in the 3-point contest.

Each women’s player is matched up against a men’s player. Kaila has drawn Will Sheehey, the leading returning scorer for the men’s team and a player many considered had a strong chance to win the competition.Kaila only misses one shot on her first rack of balls from the southwest corner.

On the rack of five balls from dead center, she’s perfect.

“Yes,” she says to herself as she pumps her fist before moving to the next rack.

By the time she’s finished, she looks at the scoreboard and says, “Yes!” again as her teammates greet her. She’s smiling. She won 18-11.

* * *

At Bowling Green’s Midnight Madness in 2011, Kaila, then a freshman, not only won the women’s draw of the 3-point shootout, but she beat the men’s contender.

That was the last time she shot a basketball in a Bowling Green jersey.

The next day at practice, she went up for a rebound and her leg twisted.

She fell to the ground in pain.

She hadn’t heard a pop. She was able to walk off the court just fine.

After icing it, the swelling went down. The next day, she felt like she could run.

But her coach, Curt Miller, told her to have an MRI.

He knew she had torn her ACL.

“Your heart skips a beat whenever you see a player go down injured,” Miller said. “You could watch her knee wobble as she came to a stop. It was one of those things as a coach that you know deep down, you hope for the best but fear the worst, and in my heart, I knew she had torn her ACL, but we were hoping maybe she’d get lucky.

“But she didn’t.”

Kaila said the MRI showed her ACL was completely ripped through. Her season was done.

“You just hear about injuries like that all the time, and you just think, ‘Oh, that’s never going to happen to me,’” she said. “And it did.”

Without basketball, the homesickness got even worse. Her parents frequently visited her at Bowling Green, and she went back to Bloomington whenever she could.

“You have the double whammy with an injury with a freshman because freshmen are dealing with homesickness and they’re dealing with fitting in with a new team, with new friends,” Miller said. “So add onto that, take away the game that meant so much to Kaila, and it magnifies everything else that’s going on freshman year.”

It was the longest Kaila had ever gone without playing basketball. Her only injuries before were a torn meniscus during the summer of her sophomore year of high school and a broken wrist the summer of her junior year.

“I was very discouraged at first,” she said. “I knew it was going to be a long process. But I wasn’t going to quit. I was like, ‘I’ve worked 15 years to make it to the college level. I’m not going to sell myself short.’ I was like, ‘I’m going to make it through this.”

But it was not an easy year for her.

And it was about to get worse.

***

Early in the offseason after Kaila’s freshman year at Bowling Green, Miller called a surprise team meeting.

He brought everyone in and told them he had taken another head coaching job with a team that Bowling Green could beat by 30 or 40 points.

He was going to IU.

“It was a very emotional meeting,” Miller said. “Bowling Green was dear to my heart. We had unbelievable success. But it was a chance of a lifetime for me and a dream opportunity.”

After successfully recruiting Kaila four and a half hours away from home — the furthest away she had ever been from her family and her community — he was now going back to that place.

Kaila’s heart started pounding. And she started crying. She couldn’t stop.

“I was, like, so hurt,” she said. “I was like, ‘I cannot believe he’s going to IU.’ And then I was thinking, like, what am I going to do? I came four and a half hours away from my home to play for you and now you’re leaving and going back to my home.”

Miller felt bad, too. He knew exactly what he was doing, and how much it probably hurt Kaila.

“I told the team and felt bad for everyone in the room, but it was hard to look at Kaila and say, ‘There’s a school you always dreamed of going at, but you came and believed in me and came to play for me, and now I’m going to a school in your hometown and a school you dreamed of being at.’”

She didn’t want to talk to him. She couldn’t stop crying long enough to do so. But shortly after, her teammates made her go into his office and talk to him.

“She was very emotional and immediately asked if she could transfer back with me,” Miller said. “Tough memories.”

Eventually, the paperwork went through, and Kaila was granted permission to transfer.

She left Bowling Green after her last final, with all of her stuff packed up in her car. She drove straight to Bloomington, and, without unpacking, drove straight to Cook Hall, the IU basketball practice facility.

Jordan was waiting for her.

The two started going through shooting drills on the women’s practice court, just the brother and sister together. Kaila told Jordan she had to get used to playing on that court now, and so he would have to get used to it, too.

She wasn’t allowed to do one-on-one yet because she was still recovering from her ACL tear, but the two did play H-O-R-S-E. She doesn’t remember who won.

“I can’t even describe it,” she said, smiling. “It was so awesome to be in there with Jordan again and just shoot and compete with him.

“I was like, ‘This is right.’ It was definitely like a welcome home feeling.”

* * *

Entering the 2012-13 season, the IU basketball media relations team had come up with the term “Assembly Hulls” to recognize the brother-sister combo playing on the men’s and women’s teams.

Miller had told Kaila they were planning to do some sort of competition between the two at Hoosier Hysteria, the official kickoff to the season.

After learning this, Kaila said she started practicing even more. She wanted to beat her brother.

She would never get the chance to participate in the event.

During an offseason conditioning drill in August, just 10 months after tearing her right ACL, she tore it again.

“I was devastated,” she said.

She couldn’t stop crying. She knew immediately she had torn it. It was an all too familiar pain.

They took her to the training room at Assembly Hall. Jordan was already there.

The only people in the room were the brother and sister and IU’s team trainer.

Jordan hugged her as Kaila cried uncontrollably. He kept telling her it was going to be OK, it was going to be OK.

Eventually, after enough hugs, Jordan managed to get her to stop crying. He was the only person who could get her to stop crying.

“It hurt really bad, but I would say it hurt me more that I couldn’t play,” she said. “I knew just how cool it would’ve been for me and Jordan to play at the same time.”

* * *

A little more than a year after tearing her right ACL for the second time, with Jordan playing professional basketball in Poland, Kaila ran onto the court for the championship round of the 3-point contest at Hoosier Hysteria with full strength in her right knee.

Her entire family is seated courtside to watch her. Well, “everyone that could make it.”

Just as a little girl, she had a chance to go against the boys again.

The finals were determined by taking the top women’s scorer and matching her up with the top men’s scorer.

Kaila would go against sophomore guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell.

She struggled on the final few racks, a weird sensation for her. She’s only used to seeing the ball go through the net.

When she launched her last ball and stole a glance at the scoreboard, she slapped her hands and refused to smile.

As the rest of her team mobbed her to congratulate her, she shook her head with her black adidas headband back and forth.

She lost to Ferrell, 17-13.

She’s been trained to expect to make every shot she takes, just like her brother.

She says when you’ve been shooting basketballs as long as she has, it’s an easy feeling to develop.

“Those last two racks got me,” she said, still expressing disappointment. “It was just fun to be out there. Everyone hates to lose, so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Kaila wasn’t wearing the candy stripes for the event. While she wore them for several games last year, she said it’ll be different this year.

When Kaila put them on for the first time, she stood in front of the mirror in the locker room and looked at herself.

“It was almost surreal,” she said. “It’s hard to even describe because you dream about something for so long. Then I made a decision to not go here, so I was like, ‘Well, that’s never going to happen.’

“It’s hard to explain. It was just surreal. I can’t believe that I’m standing here in my hometown playing and representing where I’m from.”

Follow reporter Robby Howard on Twitter @robbyhoward1.