Gold Rush: Trent VanHorn, The Right Call
12/1/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Steve Shutt
They say that your life can change with a single phone call. For Trent VanHorn, he has experienced more than his share of phone calls. All life-changing. But not all were good news.
The most recent phone call, in the fall of 2015, brought joyous news. VanHorn, a junior on the Wake Forest basketball team at the time, received the call from Director of Basketball Operations Justin Bauman. VanHorn was asked to report to the basketball office.
"I had no idea what was going on, thought I was probably in trouble for something I did," VanHorn said. Upon arriving at the office in Manchester Center, VanHorn was ushered into head coach Danny Manning's office.
"Coach Childress and Coach Manning were in there and they said, ‘We want to put you on scholarship, what do you think about that?'" VanHorn said. "I said that's an unbelievable opportunity. I hope I've made the most of it. I try to."
That VanHorn was offered a scholarship after two years as a walk-on on the Demon Deacon team came as a surprise to some. It is not the path most traveled in the world of Division I basketball. Typically, there are the recruiting calls, the visits from coaches, the opportunities to visit multiple campuses. That was not VanHorn's journey.
"I got recruited by a lot of schools in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, a lot of Division III schools," said VanHorn, a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana who played his high school ball at The Canterbury School. "It was cool to go on those visits. I visited Wheaton, and I looked at Hope College, which is another good D-III program. Ultimately, I cared more about academics and I wanted to be at a school I was really going to be happy.
"I actually had a couple friends that were older than me that went to my high school. I visited them here, got to see the school and got a little exposure that way. I visited the campus a couple more times, went on a tour and just fell in love with the school."
While not highly recruited by Division I schools, basketball was still a major part of VanHorn's life. At Canterbury, he set the school scoring record with a 46-point outburst against Clinton Christian. Against Fort Wayne Bishop Luers, VanHorn went head-to-head with James Blackmon, Jr., now a starter at Indiana.
"We were guarding each other and I had 30 points that game and he had 28 or 30, and it was a pretty good battle," VanHorn recalled. "That was one of my more memorable games."
The lure of playing college basketball continued to appeal to him after arriving on campus in the fall of 2013.
"The walk-on tryout wasn't until October, so the season was almost here and I was wondering if there would even be a tryout," VanHorn said. "I was working out the whole time since I got to school, missing out on a lot of things that freshmen do because I was in the gym thinking, ‘I really want to make this team.' There were probably 25 to 30 guys at the tryout, and I knew there was only one or two slots, and I'm thinking this is going to be tough. I played hard, tried to communicate with my teammates. I played decent in the tryout but I didn't walk out of there thinking, ‘Yeah, I got it, I'm on.' I did what I could, I hoped it worked out."
That's when VanHorn received the second phone call.
"I got a call and it was only two days after the tryout," he said. "It was Coach (Jeff) Battle, and he said can you come into the office. I said sure. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was hoping. I talked to Coach (Jeff) Bzdelik and a couple of the assistants, and they said we really liked what we saw, we want you to come out to practice for a few days and see what you can do. Again, I'm thinking here we go, I have to play well in practice."
VanHorn practiced well enough to make the club. He appeared in five games in 2014 and five more in 2015, Manning's first year.
"Trent was in the role of a walk-on when we got here," Manning said. "From day one, he always played with an edge and had a chip on his shoulder. He has continued to work and get better. For me, it is really rewarding to see him earn a scholarship. Last year, especially early on, he helped us win some games. He had a career-high 12 points against a nationally-ranked Vanderbilt team in Maui. His effort, his work-load and his intensity have been things that have been very beneficial to our team."
While juggling his basketball schedule with a full academic load may seem like a near-impossible task, VanHorn is working towards admission to medical school and a career in medicine.
"He burns the oil on both ends," Manning said. "He is a pre-med student and spends a lot of time working on the academic side. He takes that very seriously, and I look at him as a student-athlete in the truest sense of the term."
Deciding to pursue a career in medicine was not an instantaneous decision for the Deacon senior. "My dad's a chiropractor, and I had a little bit of exposure growing up with the health care profession around me," VanHorn said. "In high school, I found out that the science-related classes were the ones I was excited to go to. Once I got to Wake Forest I did some volunteering and really got my feet wet in the health care profession and did some shadowing of physicians. It was probably my freshman year that I said this is where I want to go."
But there was another experience, and another phone call, that helped set VanHorn on the medical path.
"My best friend, Austin Hatch, who played at Michigan, we were best friends in high school," VanHorn said. "We played on the same teams. We grew up together."
The two were basketball teammates throughout their formative years. You may not immediately recognize Hatch's name, but his story is unforgettable.
Hatch had the extreme misfortune of surviving two fatal airplane crashes. The first when he was 8. His father, Dr. Stephen Hatch, was a pilot and was at the controls as the plane returned to Fort Wayne from a family vacation in Michigan. The crash killed Austin's mother, Julie, his older sister, Lindsay, and his younger brother, Ian. Only Austin and his father survived.
Eight years later, Dr. Hatch had remarried, and he and his wife, Kimberly, adopted each other's children. Austin was again part of a family, with a brother Austin and sisters Maria and Brittnee. Austin, his mother and father, again flew to the family vacation home in Michigan. This plane crash in Michigan killed both Stephen and Kimberly.
On the night of the second plane crash, VanHorn received a phone call.
His mother answered the phone and broke the news to VanHorn. When he learned that Austin was in a hospital six hours away, he and his friends drove through the night to lend support to their friend. "I'll remember that night for the rest of my life," VanHorn told ESPN.
"I was in the hospital when he was in a medically induced coma for a few months," VanHorn recalled. "I got really involved in the health care profession and seeing a lot of different aspects because I was in the hospital visiting him all the time. I was helping him with his recovery. That was the first time I really saw what (medicine) was about."
Today, VanHorn is preparing for his senior season, his third under Danny Manning and staff. He has witnessed the evolution of the Demon Deacon basketball program under Manning.
"The biggest thing has just been the expectations that Coach Manning sets, especially for the walk-ons" VanHorn said. "He expected us to get way more reps in practice, to be way more involved which really elevated my game that much more. I came to practice every day knowing every day I needed to give something to help our team get better. It continued throughout the year when I got a lot more playing time. There's a strict attention to detail, we do things a certain way, and that translates onto the court. There's good structure here, there's a good foundation in place."
And that foundation, as well as the foundation he has set for himself, will lead to future success for Trent VanHorn.
