JANESVILLE
Of course, she doesn’t remember.
There’s a fair chance, though, that the nursery mobile that hung over infant Kate Huml’s crib displayed a whole lot of tiny, spinning basketballs.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Kate Huml said with a laugh.
Huml, a senior who led Janesville Craig to a 19-8 record and a spot in the WIAA Division 1 sectionals, has been named The Janesville Gazette’s 2021-2022 All-Area Player of the Year in girls basketball.
“We expected her to have a good year, but she even exceeded our expectations. She put a huge stamp on the program,” Cougars coach Kerry Storbakken said.
To say Huml was born into a basketball family would be an understatement.
Her father, Tony, a 1988 Craig graduate, played for coach Bob Suter on Janesville Craig’s 1988 WIAA state tournament team and went on to play at the University of Minnesota-Morris. Tony Huml passed away from cancer in August 2020.
Her mother, Jennifer Kurtz, also played basketball at Craig.
Her older brother, Jack, now plays at UW-Platteville after leading the Cougars in scoring as a senior in 2018-19. He also has taken over for his father as CEO and owner of Close The Gate Hoops, a youth basketball training organization with camps in Janesville and La Crosse.
And her little sister, Liz, is a freshman at Craig who was moved up to the varsity late in the season and will keep the family name on the sports pages for years to come.
“My brother and I were the two who were most passionate about basketball,” Huml said. “My dad was, too.”
In fact, her father taught her a catchphrase years ago that she likely will be able to repeat verbatim for the rest of her days:
“He’d say ‘keep your expectations in line with your preparations,’” Huml said.
Huml wrapped up a four-year varsity career ranked second on Craig’s all-time list with 1,094 career points, helping the Cougars go 14-4 in the league—one game shy of a tie for the championship. She earned first-team all-Big Eight and honorable mention coaches’ all-state honors, averaging 18.5 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game.
Huml broke the school single-game scoring record with 36 points in a February game against Sun Prairie—“we didn’t win, so it was tough to be excited about that,” she said—and had 27 in a regional victory over Kenosha Bradford.
And she got to compete at the Resch Center, home of the WIAA state girls basketball tournament. Huml qualified for the WIAA’s 3-Point Challenge after shooting 48.5% from 3-point range during the season (47 of 97), ranking tops in Division 1 and second overall. She finished fourth in the 10-player competition.
“Her best part of her game is her pull-up jumper,” Storbakken said. “It’s just unbelievable, the way she can elevate.”
Storbakken describes Huml as a prototype “gym rat” who can’t get enough of the game.
“She’s gotten better every year, but that’s not a surprise because of how hard she’s worked,” the coach said. “Her true test is her work ethic. She works constantly at her game. She’s always the first one in the gym and the last one to leave.
“She’s a great teammate and her basketball IQ is unbelievable,” Storbakken said. “She could have scored a lot more points—a lot—but she took good shots and made sure everybody was involved.”
And being in the running for a Big Eight championship made this the most fun year of Huml’s career.
“She whole team wanted to be there every day, wanted to be better every day. We had team chemistry. We were like a family,” Huml said.
She enjoyed the way everyone in the Cougars’ lineup had a different role to play, and each learned how to handle it while negotiating an obstacle course that involved yet another year of COVID-19 restrictions and some untimely injuries—including one that knocked out the Cougars’ leading scorer, junior Ellie Magestro-Kennedy, right in the midst of the tournament run.
“Ellie was the vocal leader. When she got hurt, all the other girls knew we needed to step up and do what was best for the team,” Huml said.
Huml’s exciting basketball career appears to be just getting started. She is part of a terrific group of recruits that will join the UW-Oshkosh program in the fall, competing in the tough-as-nails Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference for coach Brad Fischer’s Titans, a perennial title contender and a frequent NCAA Division III tournament qualifier.
“She’s just a great kid,” Storbakken said. “She always wanted what was best for the team. Not every kid is like that.”