PERSON OF INTEREST

BY LISA MURTHA
concrete plans for the future. Add in the
fact that Hughes, a Cincinnati public high
school with a 95 percent minority student
population, had a dismal state report card,
and the basketball team’s prospects were
looking grim.

Bigger Than
But Whelan also learned that day how
determined Wyant and his wife Alicia
were to change their players’ lives. How
they bought the boys shoes and even con-

Basketball
tact lenses. How Wyant ran study tables,
oversaw weightlifting, showed game films,
and ran practices, too, keeping the team
busy with school and basketball up to 13
hours a day five or six days a week so they’d
stay out of trouble and into the game. But

FOR TEAM HUGHES, THE SPORT IS SO MUCH he was only one person. He could only do
so much.

MORE THAN A GAME. Immediately, Whelan found herself

thinking of her own sons’ experiences at St.
Xavier, a school with two gyms, team bus-
es, and hearty team meals donated by par-
ents. We have it kind of easy, she thought. So
she donated her check that day to Hughes.
But she didn’t stop there.
For four years straight, as she officiated
games across the city, Whelan kept giving
money to the Hughes athletic department,
hoping to help Wyant help the team. She
watched her youngest child graduate from
high school. And she prayed hard from the
pews at Kenwood’s All Saints Catholic
Church for a sign of what she was supposed
to do next.
In 2014, Whelan dropped off a big
enough check to help send the Hughes
basketball team to Ohio State’s summer
team camp. The athletic director and Wy-
ant invited Whelan and her husband to
lunch. While there, Whelan asked Wyant
for his wish list. He was hesitant to give

N
it, and she was overwhelmed when she
saw it. But, sitting in a Clifton diner that
day, Whelan finally got the sign she’d been
looking for. “You were literally sitting right
NOT EVERY HIGH SCHOOL REFEREE WOULD DONATE HER PAYCHECK TO HELP A STRUGGLING there,” she says, pointing to Wyant across a
basketball team. But that’s exactly what Hall of Fame official Kelly Whelan did in 2010 picnic table today. “I just didn’t open up my
after the Hughes High School athletic director told her about Bryan Wyant, a former col- mind and heart.”
lege basketball player who was coaching the Hughes boys’ teams and moving mountains
to keep them all in play. THE NUMBER ONE NEED ON WYANT’S
Turns out, Hughes’ gym was being renovated that year, so Wyant and his team had been wish list was food—specifically dinners
trudging on foot to the UC rec center for practices. Not only that, but there was no team and after-school snacks, six days a week
van, so during the summer when busing wasn’t provided, he was making back-to-back for all three of his teams (freshman, JV, and
trips in his own car, shuttling players to games at other school gyms across the city. The varsity). Turns out, the long days Wyant
kids on Wyant’s teams already played ball in their street shoes and carried their uniforms had engineered to keep his players focused
to school in grocery bags. Most had failing grades, highly unstable home lives, and few and out of trouble were also making them

3 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 ILLUSTR ATIO N BY KO R E N S H A D M I