Letters of love: Louisville commit Hailey Van Lith steadied by incredible bond

Hailey Van Lith woke up on the day of her college signing ceremony unsure which school she would choose. All she knew with certainty was who would be at the heart of the moment.

Hailey, the five-star, can’t-miss prospect, the "Lady James Harden" according to "SLAM Magazine," the sensation with millions of YouTube views and over 300,000 Instagram followers, had narrowed her choice down to two schools: Louisville and defending national champion, Baylor.

Still wrestling with the decision, she had both a Baylor and a Louisville shirt at the ready at the Nov. 16 ceremony. She didn’t consider moving the date, though. For one, there were fans and newscasters coming from Seattle, two hours from her town in central Washington. For another, she was prepared.

“I just felt like I knew everything about both universities that I needed to know, so me pushing it back at that point would just be stalling when I already knew deep down in my heart,” she told The Courier Journal.

And although she was torn by the pull of two elite programs, Van Lith had been sure for weeks how she wanted to make her announcement: by honoring someone who could not physically be in attendance but had been essential to her upbringing.

Background:Louisville women's basketball inks top-10 recruit Hailey Van Lith 

Van Lith read a letter to her grandfather, who died in 2016, explaining her gratitude for his role in her life. "Dear Papa Van Lith," she began.

He’d been a loving presence in her childhood, occasionally serving as a mediator between Van Lith and her father during intense basketball training sessions. He’d been a constant presence, too, not only watching her games but taking in her practices and workouts several times a week.

It had been sudden when, in Van Lith's eighth grade year, he died at 65 years old of cardiac arrest.

He was never physically present at her high school or elite AAU level, never got to see her at the height of her powers, a wizard with the ball who commands the attention of everyone in the gym thanks to her relentless work ethic, which he was a part of developing.

She wishes he had been able to see her now.

Van Lith, a 4.0 student, made her college decision at the eleventh hour — only 60 minutes before her announcement was scheduled to take place at Cashmere High School. To a crowd of friends, family and media, she read the letter she’d written to her grandfather aloud, not revealing her college until the very end, with one final reference to her "Papa."

“I know you and God are smiling down on me because you have always liked the color red better anyways," she said. "I’m committing to the University of Louisville.”

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A moving surprise

Corey Van Lith chokes on emotion when thinking about the way his daughter revealed her decision. He chews on a couple of syllables and pauses before finding the right way to start.

“It surprised us,” he says of his wife, Jessica, and his reactions.

His father, Gary Van Lith, was a lifelong Washingtonian, a patriarch whose story begins in almost-too-storybook fashion: his first date with his wife came at homecoming during their senior year of high school. He’d given her his class ring that night.

Gary was a good athlete in his day, and he pushed Corey — who played two sports in college — in athletics. That’s where Corey learned to push Hailey, too.

Ever since fifth grade, Hailey would get extra training in with her father after her team’s practice had finished. Gary, a home builder, spent most of his evenings at the gym after work, watching Corey train Hailey. Occasionally, her grandfather would participate — as a rebounder or a mock screener — but Gary mostly sat quiet as the bleachers, enjoying the scene.

He'd been a demanding father, but he’d retired that role. Now, Corey was the demanding one, urging Hailey to be her best, and Gary was the good cop, providing a kindness and an understanding to Hailey when it was needed.

“I’d be hard on Hailey, and he was always there to support her, which I thought was funny because he pushed me like crazy, but he had a different approach with them,” Corey says, laughing at the memory. “So, they were incredibly close. Hailey was very, very close to him.”

It was a ritual, a labor of love. The three of them in the gym with nothing else but a bouncing ball and a shared mission.

For five or six nights a week, Corey would pick Hailey up from her team’s practice and drive to a separate gym, which he’d rent out ahead of time. Gary would meet them there. Almost always, the session was amicable and productive, but on occasion fatigue and frustration set in during a drill.

“When you do it two or three hours a night for seven years,” Corey said, “it’s not always high fives and great jobs and laughing. It’s real life.”

Hailey says now that she was stubborn as a kid, and she and her father, who have similarly competitive personalities, would butt heads. Sometimes Corey would get so heated that he’d walk away for a little bit, and during that time, Gary would be there to chat with Hailey, smoothing things over.

“He was extremely proud of his kids,” Gary’s obituary reads, “but his grandchildren gave him the most joy.”

Gary was the ultimate mediator. When Hailey was 12, he wrote her a letter explaining what it’s like being a father and wanting the best for your child.

“I did struggle with my dad and understanding where he was coming from,” Hailey says now. “And that was (my grandfather’s) relationship with my dad when they were younger. So he just wrote me a letter from his perspective and helping me understand that my dad just wanted me to reach my potential, and that it was him trying to push me because he loved me.”

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A rising star

Brent Darnell grew up with Corey. They were friends in high school. So, Darnell was first introduced to Corey’s basketball-playing daughter when she was just a kid and immediately, he says, he was taken aback.

“When she was a fourth grader, I was telling everybody, ‘Watch this girl named Hailey Van Lith.’ She’ll be one of the best players that you’ll ever see, and she’ll go play Division I basketball, maybe anywhere in the country,” he said. “She’s just gonna be unbelievable.”

Darnell remembered the tough love with which Gary raised Corey, and he saw that same approach when it was Corey’s turn.

“He was almost a spitting image of what Corey is to Hailey,” Darnell said.

As Hailey got older, Darnell’s lofty prediction about her ability proved more and more accurate as she accumulated scholarships from every corner of the country. She's rated No. 2 in her class nationally by Prospects Nation and No. 8 by ESPN.

Darnell has had a front-row seat to her ascent  — he has been her head coach for her entire high school career at Cashmere — as the 5-foot-8 guard has not only been good, she's been historically dominant, mowing through 1A basketball in the state. It’s a shocking resume.

She averaged 24 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals as a freshman, leading her team to a 25-1 record. As a sophomore, she set the Washington record for points scored in a season with 833. As a junior, she averaged 34 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists and 5 steals, earning Gatorade Player of the Year accolades for the state.

She already owns essentially every record at Cashmere, once posted a quadruple-double and has a career record of 71-6.

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“She’s almost like ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,’” Darnell said. “Just a sweetheart of a girl that is a normal kid that laughs and has fun and hangs out with her friends and is really down-to-earth. But, man, when it’s a game and it’s practice and it’s time to take it serious, I’ve never seen a more fierce competitor than her.”

Hailey has become a national sensation — her most recent Instagram video has over 300,000 views. And she’s beloved locally, too. Her games are well-attended and people often want to get pictures with the prodigy from the Pacific Northwest.

She’s lived her whole life in the Wenatchee Valley, a rural and beautiful area between the Columbia River and the Cascades Mountains. Last year, Wenatchee was the response to a "Jeopardy!" answer about the area known as the “Apple Capital of the World.” No contestant got it right.

The town of Cashmere, where the Van Liths live, has 3,000 residents, and the Wenatchee Valley website boasts that “A Wenatchee traffic jam is 4 cars at a traffic light.”

Still, that modest valley is where Hailey sprouted her larger-than-life aspirations for her basketball career. The most immediate goal starts right there: Twice her team has finished just a point or two away from a state championship, and this year, she wants to bring it its first.

“I could talk for hours about her and the impact she’s had on our basketball program, our community, our coaching staff, me,” Darnell said. “She’s been a once-in-a-lifetime player that we’ll never see again in this valley.”

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Aiming for more

Hailey has been drawing attention as a do-it-all guard since ESPN called her an “elite prospect” when she was in eighth grade, and she’s already made an international splash as an outstanding ball-handler and scorer.

The fiery lefty won four gold medals with Team USA, most recently at the 2019 U19 FIBA World Cup as one of only four high schoolers on the team, which was coached by Louisville coach Jeff Walz.

Hailey has always had gaudy goals for her basketball career, but she was never truly confident that she could reach them until spending time with USA Basketball over the last two summers. Now, she’s more sure of her ambition.

“I obviously want to be one of the greatest players ever. And so, I think I definitely want to have a chance to be Freshman of the Year, an All-American, Player of the Year, win national championships with my team, be a first-round draft pick in the WNBA. Just all those big goals,” she said. “I know I’ve won medals with Team USA, but I want to be on the real Olympic team and win gold medals with them.”

She rattles them off matter-of-factly, and it’s that attitude that has propelled her this far. Even now, after all of her success in high school — and with the full knowledge that no opponent she will face this year can effectively guard her — she still goes to the gym after practice with her father for extra training.

On Monday, she completed 90 minutes of strength and conditioning, then had high school practice from 6 to 8:30 p.m., at which point Corey arrived at the gym. Her teammates all went home, a long practice in the books, but Hailey trained on until 10 p.m. when she returned home to eat a late dinner with her parents.

That’s typical for the phenom.

“Hailey’s got this incredible drive, like I’ve never seen, day in and day out, to get better and be great, and she’s not gonna stop until that happens,” Corey said. “Just the passion that she has for life and basketball is something that I think the people of Louisville will recognize fairly early, and enjoy that.”

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Guiding hands of support

The letter that Gary wrote Hailey, the one shedding light on a father's ambition for a child, is still pinned to her wall. Even now, more than three years after Gary's death, reading it puts her at ease.

Last month at Hailey’s announcement, it was her turn to read her grandfather a letter:

"It's funny how we say that you never got to see me play a high school basketball game, but I know you've been sitting front row in every one of them. Every time I see an empty folding chair in the corner of a gym, I remember the nights you would watch my dad train me at 10:00 at night."

Darnell described Hailey as selfless. Just as she never considered moving her signing date for the sake of the people who were planning to drive to share the occasion, she also thought of and pointed to others when she announced her decision.

“She did her best to really not make it about her, when it was about her,” Darnell said. The announcement brought tears to his eyes. “You wouldn’t have known that was for Hailey and about Hailey until the last five seconds of her speech when she said, 'I’ve decided to go to the University of Louisville.'"

Instead, it was about a grandfather and a granddaughter, about nights spent in the gym after practice, about love and frustration, and about mediation and understanding.

Hailey may not have awakened on the morning of her signing day 100% certain of her college destination, but she awoke knowing how she would tell the world — with gratitude and love for her grandfather, an unbreakable bond, captured in letters.

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Hayes Gardner can be reached at hgardner@gannett.com; Twitter: @HayesGardner; Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/subscribe.