The story was different for Kyle Hardrick, a basketball phenom from the Midwest who grew up wearing University of Oklahoma hoodies, hats, and even socks. "Everyone in Oklahoma knew how much I loved Oklahoma University," he says. As a 6'9" teenager, he dreamed of playing basketball there before making it to the NBA. And it looked like it might happen. In middle school, he was named among the top 10 in the country. He competed against others who have gone pro, from Blake Griffin of the Clippers to Daniel Orton of the Thunder. College coaches, including Sooners Head Coach Jeff Capel (who is no longer with the team), started coming to his games when he was in seventh grade. By Hardrick's freshman year of high school, Hardrick says, Capel made an unofficial offer.
The Hardricks heard the same recruiting pitch as the Doughtys and countless other families. But in this case, the Hardricks had even more reason to be trusting: By the time Hardrick made a verbal commitment at 14, he'd already known Capel for several years. The family moved from Lawton to Norman to be closer to his future school. In the afternoons and on weekends, Hardrick would practice in the campus gym. His parents, Valerie and Michael, talked, texted with, and saw Capel on a regular basis. Capel has not returned messages left for him at Duke University, where he is now an assistant coach. "We thought he was a really good guy," says Valerie Hardrick, while sitting in a sandwich shop down the street from where her son now attends college.
Although Hardrick tore his ACL freshman year of high school, the college solicitations never ceased—but he never entertained them. He says Coach Capel made it clear that if he talked to anyone else he would lose his tentative spot on the Sooner roster, a consistent competitor in the Big 12 conference. In 2009, the 18-year-old went to Oklahoma, where he had always dreamed of going.
During a practice just three months into that initial semester, though, a teammate fell on Hardrick's right leg, eliciting a pop loud enough for the whole gymnasium to hear. He felt like he'd been struck with a sledgehammer and collapsed on the hardwood floor in pain.
Team doctors said X-rays didn't show a tear. They estimated Hardrick would only miss the first few games. But he didn't end up playing once the whole season. Or at the start of the next season. During practices, Hardrick felt shooting pains whenever he tried to run or jump. He says when he told his coaches about the discomfort, they said he wasn't trying hard enough. "I was in pain," Hardrick says. "I had to fight just to get though warm-ups."
That January, a year and four months after the injury, the phone rang at Valerie Hardrick's house. It was a woman from a medical clinic, saying the family owed money for an MRI their son had undergone the previous fall. Valerie said they must be mistaken—her son had never gone for an MRI. And she would know if he had. The administrator persisted, going on to say that the film showed a torn meniscus.
The family says that when they confronted the school, the staff disputed the results of the MRI and continued to maintain Hardrick had only pulled a groin muscle. Meanwhile, Hardrick says, officials began pushing him out. He recalls that the athletic director told him to start thinking about other options, saying maybe this wasn't the best place for him. He was no longer told about team meetings, he says, and then one day when Hardrick went to the gym, he discovered his keycard had been deactivated.
Spring break of his sophomore year, Hardrick used his dad's military insurance to get surgery on his own. The surgeon who did the operation told him the tear was so severe he had to remove 10 percent of the tissue, which had been flapped behind the knee, making it painful to bend or run on. When Hardrick, still determined to get back on the court, asked Oklahoma for a medical redshirt waiver, which gives injured players an extra year of eligibility, the family said the athletic director continued to deny the injury and, therefore, the waiver request. By summer, Hardrick resigned himself to transferring, and signed up for one last set of summer-school classes. Then in July, he received a bill for $3,500 and a letter informing him that the university had canceled his scholarship—effective at the close of the previous semester.
Since Hardrick had a decent grade-point average, many other Division I schools were interested. All he needed was for Oklahoma to give him a medical hardship waiver (NCAA rules say players must sit out a year if they transfer, unless they didn't play the previous year because of an injury). Although Capel was no longer coaching at Oklahoma when Hardrick lobbied for the needed paperwork, he wrote a letter to the conference officials supporting his claims that he was unable to play because of his injury. The athletic director, though, would only grant a medical hardship waiver if the Hardricks signed a release saying there was never an injury and they would never sue (records of the correspondence confirm this). The family declined.
So the 20-year-old ended up transferring to a junior college. He's since had two more surgeries on his knee and has moved up to a Division II college, Southern Nazarene University, where he hopes to continue his recovery and finish his education (Southern Nazarene is paying for his rehab). Hardrick still believes that if his injury had been addressed immediately, he might be playing in the NBA right now. "I don't love basketball anymore," Hardrick says. "Not after everything that's happened."
The Oklahoma athletic director declined an interview. However, his attorney offered this statement: "Kyle Hardrick was provided the appropriate medical services and expenses while at the University of Oklahoma. Additionally, Mr. Hardrick requested permission to transfer to another institution, which permission was granted by the University."
