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He is somewhere overseas, deep in the heart of an economically poor nation. For hours, he has been standing in the back of a truck, handing out shoes to kids with wide eyes and raggedy clothes. The kids have never had shoes, much less brand-new ones. They aren't sure what to do with the shoes, but they look at him gratefully and curiously. But then, finally, the truck is empty. The shoes are gone. But the line of kids still stretches for miles, kids without shoes, and he gets this sinking, desperate feeling, and…
...And then Ron Hunter jerks awake. Usually it's somewhere around 5 a.m., give or take a few minutes. He can't go back to sleep. He has to get to work because he has a basketball team to coach and calls to make and shoes to hustle. “Before the shoes, my purpose in life was winning basketball games,” Hunter says. “The shoes have changed my life…changed who I am.”
At this moment he's sitting in his modest office on the campus of the university that arguably has the most awkward name and vexing identity crisis in college basketball. That would be Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, or IUPUI, or “Ooey Pooey” as it's laughingly known to its rivals.
Located more or less halfway between West Lafayette to the north and Bloomington to the south, IUPUI has more than 22,000 students on a sprawling campus very near the state capitol, Lucas Oil Stadium, and NCAA headquarters. But it's not even regarded as the best D-I program in Indianapolis, that distinction belonging to Butler University, a consistent Top 25 team for the last decade or so.
It's understandable that Butler refuses to cross town to play IUPUI in its home gym, a 1,200-seat bandbox known as “The Jungle.” But Butler also won't schedule the Jaguars either in its home arena, historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, or in the Indiana Pacers' Conseco Fieldhouse, where IUPUI will play four games this season.
Butler's position is that it has nothing to gain by playing IUPUI and something to lose, be it prestige or a recruit. Almost all IUPUI's players come from Indianapolis or very nearby. Since 1996, when the Jaguars joined Division I, Hunter has built a solid program by taking kids who, for one reason or another, were underrated or overlooked by Butler, Indiana, Purdue, and the other top recruiters who relentlessly work the Indiana high school ranks.
At IUPUI, rejection is a part of life. Neither Indiana nor Purdue will play the Jaguars, even though IUPUI graduates receive their degrees from one of those institutions. There is no such thing as an IUPUI degree, which gives Jaguars' Athletics Director Mike Moore a unique fund-raising challenge: How do you tap into your alumni when there are none?
“The big challenge here is that there's more loyalty to the schools (IU and PU) than to the campus as a whole,” Moore said. “But we see athletics as a vehicle to change that. Nothing makes me happier than when I walk across campus and see students wearing IUPUI hats and shirts.”
Nothing has been a more important catalyst for new campus pride than the Jaguars' appearance in the 2003 NCAA tournament. After defeating arch-rival Valparaiso to win the Mid-Continent Conference's automatic berth, they were assigned a No. 16 seed and pitted against Kentucky in the opening round. The Wildcats won easily, 95-64, but at least the basketball world knew that IUPUI was more than just a funny name.
The phone call that changed Hunter's life came late one evening in early January, 2008. As Hunter was trying to go to sleep after a home game, he got a call from Todd Mellon, a friend who then was working for a North Carolina-based organization known as Samaritan's Feet. When Mellon explained his group's mission -- to accumulate and distribute shoes to poor kids around the world -- he got Hunter's attention.
Although Hunter never lacked for Converse All-Stars and other shoes when he was growing up, his Catholic training instilled in him a strong compassion for the needy. At one point in the conversation, Mellon said, “We need a coach who will go barefoot in a game.” To which Hunter replied, “Yeah, who can we get?” Then, said Hunter, “It really just hit me.”
When Hunter took the idea to his A.D., Moore only had one bit of advice: “Don't do it unless you're really going to be committed to it.” No problem with that. Looking at his schedule, Hunter decided to go barefoot during the Jan. 24 home game against Oakland because that was the game closest to the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., his childhood hero. When the word got out that Hunter was leaving his size 13 ½ brogans in the locker room, it attracted an unprecedented media presence to “The Jungle.” ABC News even made Hunter its “Person of the Week.”
Soon thereafter, pairs of shoes began arriving at Hunter's office. The numbers became so huge that the governor of Indiana allowed Hunter to store them in a warehouse run by prisoners. As the shoe movement began to take on a life of its own, Hunter also had to focus on coaching the best team of his career. The Jags finished 26-7, but then got stiffed by both the NCAA and NIT tournament selection committees – another slap in the face to the program accustomed to it.
After the season, Hunter got another jolt when star player George Hill decided to give up his senior year and opt for the NBA draft, where the San Antonio Spurs shocked the hoops world by making him the first Summit League player ever selected in the first round (26). For Hunter, it was a mixed blessing – unprecedented recognition for his program but also a huge loss for the 2008-'09 season. “The George Hill thing caught us off guard,” Hunter says. “Teams like ours have a hard time recovering from that.”
In the summer of 2008, Hunter took his team, along with several thousand pairs of shoes, to Peru for a series of exhibitions. It was there that he had the experience that led to the dreams that haunt him to this day.
“We loaded up the shoes on this old bus, must have been built in the 1930s, and drove out to the middle of nowhere,” Hunter said. “When we ran out of shoes, they started shaking the bus. I remember looking out and seeing mothers holding babies. They had been standing in line for hours. I took off my shoes and gave 'em to some kid. But we just didn't have enough. Don't you see? All these kids needed shoes and we just didn't have enough. I knew that would have an effect on me the rest of my life.”
(Continued in part II.)
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Billy Reed