Dr. Kyle Hornsby: IU basketball star now cardiologist in Bloomington. 'People remember you'
BLOOMINGTON -- When patients see the name Dr. Kyle Hornsby stitched in white italic lettering on the black pullover he is wearing over his scrubs, something clicks. Then those patients see the logo on that pullover, the crimson red symbol of IU Health Bloomington Hospital, where Hornsby works as a cardiologist.
The clicks get louder. But what exactly is it?
Have they met this doctor before? Why do they know this name? And why does Hornsby go so well together with that IU logo?
Some of the patients don't figure it out until they go home and turn to Google. Just put Hornsby and IU in the search bar and it pops right up.
Other patients figure it out when Hornsby stands to shake their hands after clinic, towering at 6-5. That's it. This doctor must be that Kyle Hornsby.
That Kyle Hornsby was an IU basketball star who played one season for Bob Knight, then for Mike Davis. He was the smooth, sharp-shooting guard who, in 2002, led the team to the NCAA championship game, racking up a 47.3% 3-point shooting average during the tournament. It was the first time IU had been to the Final Four since 1992.
If Hornsby were practicing his medical specialty, cardiac electrophysiology, in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire or California, anywhere other than Indiana, he'd be Dr. Hornsby, the doctor.
But Hornsby's office is less than two miles, three or four minutes by car, from Assembly Hall where he played at Indiana University. And so, the people in these parts of the state know him as Dr. Hornsby, the IU basketball star.
"People remember more often than I would have thought because that's been 20 years," said Hornsby, now 41. "When you think about how long it has been and that people remember you, it is quite impressive."
The quote among his IU basketball team always was: "If you win here, they'll remember."
"And it's true," said Hornsby. As patients make the connection, they ask all kinds of questions, and Hornsby indulges them, telling them his favorite Knight stories and what it was like to cut down the net after beating Kent State in 2002 to make it to the Final Four.
And sometime that brings back memories for Hornsby of a kid from Louisiana who fell in love with basketball at the same time he fell in love with science, how the two converged at IU, and how that led him to a passion that overshadows anything he ever did on a basketball court.
Hornsby's wins these days are measured by the lives he saves, and those wins as a cardiologist are even better than draining a 3-pointer or making it to the finals of the NCAA tournament.
"I love getting to spend time with patients, talking to them and figuring out these puzzles," said Hornsby. "They are healthier, and they feel so much better and that is so fulfilling."
Knight: 'No, you'll do sports marketing'
Hornsby was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and grew up in a small town called Anacoco, a "village" of fewer than 1,000 people. His dad was a high school coach and teacher, who went on to become a guidance counselor. His mom was the librarian for the K-12 district.
Basketball was Hornsby's first love, but he also fell in love with science in middle school, where he said he had great teachers who ignited a fascination with the inner workings of the human body.
By the time Hornsby got to Anacoco High, he was a stellar student and, if possible, an even better basketball player.
Hornsby graduated from his class of 47 in a three-way tie for valedictorian. On the court, he was a three-time all-state honoree, Class B Player of the Year and played in the Coca-Cola All-American game. Newspaper articles at the time called Hornsby "sensational," "outstanding" and "superstar."
Knight was sitting in his office in Bloomington when he learned about this Hornsby kid from Louisiana. There was no internet, so recruiting was done by word-of-mouth, phone calls, letters and faxes.
When Knight got the call about Hornsby, a standout shooter who was also stellar academically, he thought this kid sounded exactly like the type of player he wanted on his team. Knight flew to Anacoco, he walked into the Hornsby living room and sat down on the couch.
By that time, the late 1990s, Knight had led IU to three national championships. He was a college basketball icon, a legendary coach known for toughness, hard work and making sure his students graduated.
Knight turned to Hornsby, who was sitting on a couch across from him: "If you come to Indiana University, what do you think you want to major in?" Hornsby was thinking sports science, athletic training or something in that realm, something with science.
"He looked me dead in the eye," Hornsby said, "and he said, 'No, you're going to do sports marketing management.'" That sounded OK to Hornsby because playing for IU sounded even better.
Hornsby had been recruited by other schools, Tennessee, Virginia, LSU, Stanford, Mississippi State but, at that time, none of those programs were winning big. Some of the powerhouse programs like Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Kentucky, were looking at Hornsby, but they weren't recruiting him hard.
"So, when Indiana came to the doorstep," Hornsby said, "I was like, 'Well, this is a no brainer.'"
On the couch in Anacoco, Louisiana, Hornsby told Knight that when he came to Bloomington for a visit, if he liked the players and thought it was a good fit for him, he would commit to Indiana.
Hornsby's trip to Bloomington would be his first college visit − and his last. He really liked the players, he liked the facilities, and he liked Steak 'n Shake. There were no Steak 'n Shakes in Louisiana, so Hornsby asked the IU players to take him there.
As he ate a Frisco Melt with those skinny, crispy fries at the Bloomington hamburger joint, he talked to players about what it was like being a Hoosier, playing for Knight and what it was like to always have a Frisco Melt nearby.
Hornsby went back to his hotel room that night, smiling. The next morning, Knight called Hornsby into his office and said, "Well what do you think?"
"I'm coming," said Hornsby.
He went back to Louisiana and canceled all of his other college visits. Hornsby didn't know it at the time, but that decision he made as a teenager to play basketball at IU would be a crucial one, not just for his college career, but for his career after sports.
There was, after all, a man named Lawrence Rink, IU's team physician, who also happened to be a pioneer in cardiac medicine. And Dr. Rink would soon become Hornsby's greatest mentor.
'I'm here to stay'
As Hornsby started his freshman year of classes at IU, he had no intention of becoming a doctor, much less a cardiologist. There were no medical professionals in Hornsby's family, so he enrolled in the major Knight had encouraged him to, sports marketing management.
It took just one semester for Hornsby to figure out he hated that major. He went to his academic advisor and told her, "This is awful. I can't do this. I'm going to switch my major." Hornsby turned to exercise science, a little nervous, at first, of what Knight would think.
"But as long as you were doing well in class and you were studying, Coach Knight didn't care what you did," said Hornsby. "I just think he liked the idea of people going into a business sports background, but that was just not my cup of tea."
Hornsby switched his major to kinesiology and he loved it. He played basketball and he loved it. Of course, none of it was easy. Basketball was a like a second full-time job, Hornsby said, but he wouldn't trade that experience for anything. It's almost impossible to describe just how exhilarating it was to be an IU player during that time.
"Getting to play for a legend, and he just really is a legend in coaching," Hornsby said of Knight. "What he brought to basketball at the time was unprecedented. You can put him up against basically any coach in any sport and there is an argument there to be made that he's the top coach."
One of Hornsby's favorite memories with Knight came in his very first game. IU was playing at Assembly Hall, winning by 50 points, with 17,000 fans watching. Knight called Hornsby off the bench and his nerves immediately set in.
Hornsby was used to playing at Anacoco, in a gym that held 800 people. Within his first seconds of play, Hornsby got a rebound.
"And my very first thought is, 'I have to get rid of this ball. I don't want it,'" said Hornsby. "And so, I pivoted, and I immediately threw it, and Kirk Haston, who is 6-10, he's running the other direction on offense, and I hit him right in the back."
The other team grabbed the ball and scored. Knight called a timeout. "And I was naive enough at the time to think, 'All right, so he's going to coach me,'" said Hornsby.
Knight took his clipboard, held it in front of Hornsby and started scribbling. A newspaper photographer just so happened to catch that moment, Hornsby squinting to see what Knight had written and Knight looking at Hornsby like he was an idiot.
The scribbling, Hornsby finally figured out, said: "How (expletive) dumb?" Knight told Hornsby to take the bench, but minutes later, Knight put him back in the game.
Hornsby always had so much respect for Knight, he really wanted to play for Knight and so he was shocked, as the rest of the college basketball world was, when Knight was fired in September 2000.
The coach Hornsby came to play for was gone, but Hornsby wasn't going anywhere. He had already redshirted one year, due to a knee injury during the 1998-99 season. If he transferred in 2000, the NCAA rules said he would lose a year of eligibility.
"I'm here to stay," Hornsby said, after Knight's firing. He stayed, and he played three seasons for Mike Davis. Hornsby's favorite game of his IU career was the win against Kent State in the 2002 Elite Eight.
"I came to IU because I wanted to cut down a net," Hornsby said. "I just remember watching Final Fours, watching the NCAA tournament, watching people win state championships, watching them win national championships, and I had not had that experience in high school. So, my next goal was I wanted that experience in college."
Hornsby still has a piece of that net in his basement. All of those memories were wonderful, the guys in the locker rooms, the practices, the comradery, the talk. But as Hornsby's IU basketball career played out, he started thinking about his future.
He wasn't, after all, going to the NBA.
'He will become the No. 1 sports cardiologist in the country'
"Everybody comes to a point in sports where you realize your days are numbered," Hornsby said. "It's not going to continue. So, you start to think about what you are going to do after."
Hornsby turned to IU's team physician Dr. Rink, who helped him navigate what his career might be after basketball. At first, Hornsby decided on physical therapy school. He liked medicine, he liked health care and he wanted to do something where he could talk to patients and see them on a regular basis.
After graduating from IU, Hornsby worked as a physical therapy tech as he applied for physical therapy school and took grad courses. But as he did that, Hornsby talked some more to Dr. Rink and other mentors, and he wasn't sure physical therapy was his passion.
When Dr. Rink called to tell Hornsby he had gotten into physical therapy school, Hornsby told Dr. Rink he had decided to apply to medical school. "Well, that's a little harder to get into," Rink said.
That didn't faze Hornsby. He forged ahead, took more courses and got into medical school.
With Rink as his mentor, Hornsby migrated toward cardiology as his specialty. And when he started reading those textbooks, he fell in love with the cardiovascular system.
During his first year of medical school, Hornsby shadowed Dr. John Strobel, a specialist in cardiac electrophysiology. He liked the face-to-face interaction with patients in clinic and he liked that the discipline included getting to perform procedures.
As Hornsby earned his medical degree at IU, did his residency at Duke and then a fellowship at the University of Michigan, Dr. Rink was always close by, mentoring him.
“I think he will become the No. 1 sports cardiologist in the country,” Rink said of Hornsby. “It’s probably the drive he received from his parents and coach Knight and the people around him, but he has not taken a shortcut. He’s taken the biggest challenges there are to get where he is.”
A basketball star once again
More than a decade into his career, Hornsby is a pro at what he does. He is good at taking his very complex medical career and whittling it down to simple terms.
"The electrical system of the heart is very similar to all the electrical circuitry that is entering this room, that powers this computer, that powers the lights," Hornsby says from his office inside IU Health Bloomington Hospital. "And if you have a short circuit or a malfunction in that electrical system, your heart is not going to work the way it should, just like this room wouldn't work without electricity."
He goes on to talk about pacemakers, arrythmias, defibrillators and all other sorts of highly intelligent medical facts and figures.
These days, this Kyle Hornsby is definitely more doctor than basketball star.
His days of playing basketball are over. That happened in his third year at Duke when he was playing a pickup game and his knee went out. As Hornsby embarked on his fourth knee surgery, the ortho surgeon told him if he didn't stop playing, a knee replacement was coming within 10 years.
Hornsby decided to leave the court for good.
These days, he has four kids that keep him busy. Hornsby is married to Whitney, the program director at the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was a standout college soccer player who spent two years at UConn and two at IU, where Hornsby met her and proposed with a ring wrapped in candy-striped socks.
The couple has two sets of twins, fifth-graders Reid and Riley, and first-graders Andrew and Addison. All of the kids are into sports − soccer, basketball, baseball and gymnastics. Hornsby coaches and he cheers them on.
His sports career, his IU basketball career, is over. But, in a way, it isn't.
There is always, after all, that patient who figures out that their Dr. Kyle Hornsby is that Kyle Hornsby and he becomes a basketball star once again.
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Former IU basketball star Kyle Hornsby, now cardiologist at IU Health
