02/19/2019

Keep Balling: How Kiyanna Black learned to stop hesitating and love the basketball

J.L. Kirven / For The Post

July 1, 2016 — Kiyanna Black stands on the 3-point line with the ball in her hands. She sees an opening in the defense and doesn’t hesitate to attack it. She never hesitates. Swiftly, she drives past her defender and heads for a layup.

The next morning, Kiyanna wakes up in her house in agonizing pain. The pain resides underneath the big, fluffy comforter that rests on her queen-sized bed. As she rolls back her silk sheets, she spots the culprit — her aching, warm and badly swollen left knee.

As Kiyanna limps out of bed, she hobbles to her right, being careful not to place too much weight on the left side. It’s an exercise she’s done too often as a basketball player with bad knees.

Yet the agony of post-game aches, the soreness after hundreds of practices — even a torn meniscus suffered during her sophomore season — does not compare to this pain.

“I have to get this checked out,” she thinks, replaying the moment she landed awkwardly after the layup a day earlier at Dodge Recreation Center in Columbus.

Hours later, Kiyanna sits in an exam room at the Jameson Crane Sports Medicine Institute. She went there after her high-school trainer diagnosed her of the big one. As she waits for Dr. Christopher Kaeding to return with a second opinion of her knee, the clock on the wall ticks. And as time fades away, so does the vision she’s had for her life since she was 9 years old.

And now, for the first time since third grade, she’s envisioning life without basketball.

Basketball is everything to her.

“It was the first thing that made me feel alive,” Kiyanna later says.

One month earlier, Kiyanna traveled to Indianapolis for the WNBA Combine, where she showcased the skills that made her Ohio University’s third all-time leading scorer (1,774 points).

She’s one of the shortest players on the court. Standing at 5-foot-5 with an afro puff that gives her an extra inch, Kiyanna’s ability to hook passes around defenders, shoot over opposition and drive through hordes of bodies on her way to finishing around the rim, gained her respect.

She left the combine feeling hopeful about her future and close to signing with Jeanne McNulty-King, the agent who could make her hopes of playing overseas come true.

As the excitement of professional basketball and big-time agents fades away, Dr. Kaeding returns with news. It’s the big one. A torn ACL and MCL in her left knee. As he explains the injury in detail, Kiyanna makes a silent proclamation. This is it.

No more basketball.

No press conference, no retirement tour, just an athlete tired of being broken and rebuilt.

Eight months have passed since Kiyanna broke up with her first love. Surgery on her knee went well and now she’s a manager at Retro Lounge, an old school bar on the Columbus’ Eastside with good food, big TVs and friendly bartenders. She’s living her life and even seeing basketball from time to time in the form of pick-up games.

It’s not the lift she imagined, but she’s making it work. She never had a plan-b to basketball, but she’s adapted to her new life well. Kiyanna is too optimistic to dwell on misfortune. She’s always been that way.

She’s a jokester with a huge personality that’s never wavered. She is content, but family and close friends wonder how she deals with it alone.

“She was still herself in front of people,” Andrea Black, Kiyanna’s mother, said. “But you couldn’t really tell how she was by herself.”

Despite carrying a smile, they know Kiyanna misses the game. That’s why four friends from high school — Columbus Africentric, an Ohio girl’s basketball powerhouse — invite her as they make a run at the Columbus Parks and Rec women’s league championship.

For the first time basketball wise, Kiyanna hesitates.

“We tried to convince her to join the team,” CharVonna Chandler, one of the team members, says. “But we understood what she was dealing with, and we felt like she would come in her own time.”

Time is what Kiyanna needs. She went from robbing defenders of their balance to having her balance robbed as she tries to stand in the shower on her good leg. Basketball doesn’t get to decide anymore when she’s ready.

Because when she comes back, she wants it to be like she never left.

Kelsey Boeing | FOR THE POST

Kiyanna Black serves as an assistant coach on Ohio University Women's Basketball team.

A few weeks later, Kiyanna dons a mesh purple jersey for the Retired Nubians. The team name is forgettable, but the way they play is not.

The Retired Nubians cruise to the championship game. Kiyanna, Chandler and the rest of the team dominate the league but are forced to forfeit the title game after Chandler gets stuck in Route 315 traffic, leaving the squad with four players at tip-off.

Again, Kiyanna is knocked off the court.

Kiyanna sits in her 2013 silver Chevy Malibu, waiting for a friend to finish up at a hair salon. To pass the time, Kiyanna swipes through apps on her phone.

Suddenly, a message from an old friend appears.

It’s coach Bob Boldon, her former coach at OU. The message clutches her attention because she hasn’t seen Boldon in months; they have a ton to catch up on, but he’s not reaching out for that. He needs Kiyanna’s help.

He wants her to return to Athens to coach under him as a graduate assistant.

Boldon is in a bind. His assistant coach left him for a head coaching job at Valparaiso, and took his graduate assistant with her. Boldon’s staff is incomplete and after a subpar season, people who helped build his legacy at Ohio continue to leave.

There are plenty of former players he can call, but he wants the best.

“I like all my players,” Boldon says later. “But it’s easy to like one of the best all-time players.”

The thought of being back on campus entices Kiyanna. Basketball, though, makes her hesitate — again. Instead of accepting the job over the phone, they decide to meet for lunch in a week.

At the meeting, held at a Panera in Canal Winchester, Kiyanna listens and eats a Caesar salad as Boldon details the job description: Mentoring the players, helping to plan the team’s eating arrangements and running Ohio’s scout team.

“I was like the hype man behind the scenes,” said Bobcats’ assistant coach Tarvares Jackson, who attended the meeting. “I was like ‘Hey KB it’s a great opportunity. We’d love to have you back. We miss you.’”

Kiyanna needs to get to work, so the reunion wraps up. Boldon and Jackson don’t expect an immediate answer, but they want a decision soon.

Two days later, she texts Coach Bob.

“Let’s build champions.”

Kiyanna stands at half court, near a dozen former Ohio women’s basketball players. It’s the 50th anniversary celebration of The Convo, and the arena is as full as it’s ever been for a women’s game. The applause for these all-time greats sounds like thunder.

She’s the only former player dressed in fancy clothes. Her face brightens up from the new jumbotron, which was installed after she graduated. It’s showing a video of her hoisting the Mid-American Conference Tournament MVP trophy she won her junior year. After the recognition, she hurries to the locker room to prepare the Bobcats for the second half of a game against Ball State.

Junior shooting guard Amani Burke — she was a high school senior when Kiyanna graduated from Ohio — leads the Bobcats to a blowout win in record-breaking fashion. Burke makes 11 three-pointers in the game, breaking the previous mark held by Kiyanna (10).

Players, fans and media who know how Kiyanna used to shut down after losses, wonder how she feels about watching her record fall.

“You did not want to be in the same room after (Kiyanna) lost,” Andrea Black says. “We used to tell her, ‘dang it’s just a game. It’s OK.’”

But instead of being jealous, Kiyanna is elated for Burke and for the rest of the team for notching another win. She’s a coach now and when they win, she wins. The team doesn’t see her as coach Black though, they see her as a big sister.

“It’s cool to have her here,” Burke says. “She’s like a big sister to me, telling what I need to hear, what I don’t want to hear.”

At practice following the game, Kiyanna sits with players, talking life and her experiences. She’s known for memorable and funny quotes, none of which Burke said should ever be published.

But mainly Kiyanna speaks about how the team can experience the joys she did, and how they could avoid the sorrows.

Kiyanna saw Ohio struggle in her first two seasons. After six wins her freshman year to slightly improving to nine wins in her second, Kiyanna realized she had to be the Bobcats’ leader if they ever wanted to win. In Kiyanna’s final two seasons, Ohio won two MAC championships and the 2015 MAC Tournament. Those were the greatest teams in school history.

Now she’s back and teaching Ohio (21-3, 10-3 MAC) how to win.

“When we came in (Boldon and Jackson), she was the foundation of what we had,” Jackson said. “Having her back and willing to mentor is great for our program.”

Kiyanna Black stands at the 3-point line with the ball in her hands.

Ohio’s practice is wrapping up with a scrimmage. Boldon tells everyone the next basket wins. “Sudden death,” he says.

Kiyanna starts to dribble.

The team knows how good she was. Defenders eyes are fixed on her. They don’t know how to guard her. Give her too much space, and she’ll knock down the open shot. Play her too close, and she’ll make a move on you. That was during her playing days.

Can she still ball?

Players scramble to defend the former prep great, Ohio legend and short-lived rec league player with bad knees.

Kiyanna sees an opening in the defense. She doesn’t hesitate to attack it. She’ll never hesitate again.

She starts her favorite move, the step-back jumper that Erica Johnson calls lethal. The perfect choice for “sudden death.”

She drives hard, steps back, shoots the ball and then “swish.”

Game over.

While the other players look in disbelief, Kiyanna dances in celebration up the court.

She’s still got it.

Development by: Midge Mazur / For The Post