First Autistic to sign intent to play Division 1 hoops

Post Reply New Topic

Kalin Bennett may not be a game-changer at Kent State University. But Kent State could be a life-changer for Kalin Bennett. And if he has his way, he’ll change the lives of others, too.


Bennett is a 6-10, 300-pound basketball recruit from Little Rock, Arkansas, and he has autism. Once labeled a child who might never speak or walk, he is readying himself to break new ground. Earlier this month, Bennett became the first student-athlete with autism to sign a national letter of intent to play a team sport at the NCAA Division I level, according to the NCAA. He’ll enroll at Kent State next summer.

He is coming with more than basketball on his mind.


“I want to make an impact not just on the court, but with kids that are struggling with the same things I am,’’ Bennett said. “I want to use this platform to inspire other kids with autism and non-autism. I want to let them know, hey, if I can do this, you can do it, too. A lot of times they feel alone and by themselves, and I felt that same way growing up.’’


Recruited by several other colleges, he chose Kent State in large part because of its growing initiative with autism support on its campus.

ennett said he wants to be a prototype for others to see all the things he hopes to accomplish during his time at Kent, and beyond, with a dream of having his own charity.


“I want to be able to make a place where (autistic) kids can just come by, have fun, don’t feel no fear being around other people; be able to express themselves, be able to be who they are without worrying about what people think about them, or how they process stuff,’’ he said.

His athleticism and engaging personality belie his early struggles. Bennett did not sit up until he was 2. He did not walk until he was 4. He did not talk until he was 7 and did not hold a conversation until he was 8. Then Bennett’s real journey began.

The challenge, over the next four years is for Kent to support Bennett’s academic and social acclimation. While his mother will move to Kent for emotional support, which is not uncommon among basketball recruits, Bennett must prove he can function on his own living in a dorm and going to classes while he also finds his place on a basketball team that is a perennial contender in the Mid-American Conference.

Having autism could make his adjustment problematic on a large college campus, so Bennett has taken an important step to alleviate that stress. He graduated from high school with good grades in the spring, and now attends Link Year Prep, a gap-year program in Branson, Mo., to prepare himself to be more independent in college.

In choosing Kent, Bennett found a university prepared to deal with the challenge of an autistic student, with multiple campus resources to help smooth their college transition. Kent’s variety of autism programs are nationally ranked by various organizations in several different areas. That, as much as basketball, is what lured Bennett to KSU.


Bennett is keenly aware of his circumstances. When he graduated from Little Rock Christian, a therapist who once believed he would never speak, never sit or never walk asked to film his graduation ceremony.


“Kalin told me, ‘Momma, I want to talk to her,’” Sonja Bennett recalled.


Kalin had read his medical file and knew what medical professionals had predicted for him.


“I don’t know if you have ever been around an autistic child, but they are brutally honest. They want to know,’’ Sonja Bennett said. “They are not being defiant. They are not trying to be nasty. But they can have hard questions that they want you to answer. I showed him his (medical) file. I wanted him to read this book of files so he would know how he needs to always keep fighting.


“So, when he read it, and then met the therapist, he said; ‘Are you the one who said I would never do this and never do that?’ She said, ‘Yes Kalin, I am.’ He said, ‘My question is, I hope you haven’t told anybody else that because you could ruin their lives.’ She sat right there and took it from Kalin. She did.”

Sonja Bennett, who is a phlebotomist, found work in Branson, Missouri, and moved there to be near Kalin.

Donyes said Sonja Bennett is giving her son room to grow.

“She’s done a phenomenal job of not sticking her fingers in everything,’’ the coach said. “She doesn’t let him make excuses. She doesn’t let him settle. He lives on campus with his teammates. He’s functioning. He’s on it.’’

Kalin wants the arrangement to continue in Kent next year. Sonja plans to find another job and move again.

“I talked to (Kent State) coach (Rob Senderoff), and I was like, unless my mom comes, I ain’t comin’,’’ Kalin Bennett said. “The separation anxiety really doesn’t upset me no more. But at the same time, I still like that support. Even when I have the best day of my life, I still want to make sure I see my mom’s face.’’

Kent has several campus resources for autism students to help smooth the college transition: Partnering for Achievement and Learning Success, College Success for students with Asperger’s or Autism, the Office of Student Accessibility Services, TRIO Student Support Services and several other programs. Traditional students who wish to be involved are often paired with a student with autism. One of the sororities on campus has direct involvement with the KSU’s autism initiatives.

“I remember Kalin’s eyes lit up when I mentioned the student organizations,’’ said Campana, “because that would be his chance to get involved.’’

According to Campana, there are 30 registered students with autism at Kent, “but we believe there are up to 500 students, including grad students,’’ who have some form of autism and use the services provided by the university, she said. Among them is Campana’s son, who will graduate from Kent next spring and has a job waiting for him in Columbus, she said.

it's a feel-good story so far, but the major test is yet to come, and Bennett will not be the only one taking it. Can a basketball player with autism actually play a meaningful role on a Division I basketball team? Can Senderoff adapt to coaching him? Can his teammates adapt to playing with him? Anthony Ianni has autism joined Michigan State’s basketball team as a walk-on in 2009, but only played 49 minutes in three seasons. Kent State recruited Bennett with considerably more action in mind than that.

There is an immediate recognition that something is special about Kalin Bennett.

His 6-foot-11 frame, 300 pounds and infectious 1,000-watt smile offer only a glimpse of how Bennett stands out among his peers.

“His energy always lifts the room,” said Kent State junior forward Danny Pippen. “KB is the one who will come into the gym the loudest at 7 a.m. He’s funny and a cool dude.”

Bennett overcame many challenges as a child. He did not sit up until he was two years old. He didn’t walk until 4, didn’t talk until 7 and Bennett did not hold a conversation until the age of 8.

He graduated from Little Rock Christian Academy High School in Arkansas and spent this past school year in Branson, Mo. at Link Year Prep, a Christian gap-year program that helps prepare students for college. Bennett and his mom, Sonya, moved from Little Rock to Kent this summer to prepare for the adventure ahead.

Sonya, a phlebotomist, is the main cog in Bennett’s support system. Bennett’s father, Gerald, assists from a distance in Dallas. Bennett stays in a dorm on campus. Sonya, divorced, lives about five miles away. She’s close, but limits her visits to campus and her son comes to her home about once a week.

Kent State provides a variety of autism programs that Bennett depends on: College Success for students with Asperger’s or Autism, Partnering for Achievement and Learning Success, TRIO Student Support Services and the Office of Student Accessibility Services.

He also receives support from a prayer group that calls him each morning.

“God is my foundation,” Bennett said. “Being able to pray gives me self assurance.”

And there’s the help from the basketball team and its staff.

But Sonya still worries.

“There’s still major challenges that he goes through with autism,” said Sonya, who also has an older daughter, Jessica Robinson. “I thought he would be OK alone (at Link Year) but he had a major anxiety attack and that got me there.”

Sonya said Kalin had an easier transition on campus during the summer, but things changed when school started this fall.

“He had a major anxiety attack because more people were here,” Sonya said. “I told him not to feel bad because we all struggle as freshmen in college, so just imagine someone with a disability.”

The first challenge for Bennett, 19, developed the morning of the first day of school. Similar to many first-year students, he had trouble finding the location of his classes. Despite the confusion, he found a solution.

“I used my GPS,” said a smiling Bennett, a Communications major. “I went into five different buildings looking for this particular class. As I was walking out of one building, someone grabbed me and said that I was in their class because they heard my name called.”

Kent State coach Rob Senderoff now has the opportunity to mold the biggest and one of the youngest players on his roster. Senderoff works in conjunction with the academic support services and the school’s autism programs.

“We didn’t recruit Kalin because he has autism,” Senderoff said. “We recruited him because we saw his potential as a basketball player. I don’t recruit someone to have a story. This isn’t a charity case.”

So, that means Bennett participates in all of the drills that include sprints, work in the paint and understanding concepts of plays.

“Sometimes I may have to show him things in greater detail or physically show him something as opposed to telling him, because he may need to see visually what we’re trying to explain,” Senderoff said. “But 95 percent is just like what we’re doing with the rest of the team.”

And the rest of the team would not dare ease up on the man-child.

“I don’t give him any leeway,” Pippen said. “He ain’t going to let you walk over him. “KB doesn’t want any shortcuts or for anyone to look at him like he’s disabled. Unless someone brings it up — ‘Hey, how is that guy with autism?’ — I don’t even think about it.”

Bennett appreciates the team’s approach. The tougher the practices, the better.

“My teammates and coaches are hard on me because they want me to get better,” said Bennett, who recovered from March labrum surgery on his left shoulder. “But I expect even more from myself. I didn’t move 1,000 miles to waste anybody’s time. I want to be able to do more for myself and help my family.”

“During a practice I saw Kalin was comfortable with his teammates,” Sonya said. “He was smiling and enjoying himself . . . I’ve often asked God if I made a mistake by letting him fulfill his dream because of all he goes through to play this game. He’s held my face in his hands and told me that this isn’t my dream, but his.”

There was an electricity in the air for the Kent State University basketball team’s season opener.

History was being made as freshman Kalin Bennett, a basketball player with autism, made his debut Wednesday night.

The 6-foot-10 forward is the first person with autism to sign a national letter of intent with a Division I school.

With five minutes left in the game, Bennett went in. He was smiling ear to ear as he made a rebound and his first basket in a collegiate game while surrounded by his coach, his teammates, his mom and the entire Kent State community.

"This game was a lot of fun," Bennett said. "Being able to display all the hard work we put in from when we first got here to now. And for my mom to see it - it was really big for me to let her know that everything she did was not in vain."

Despite the crushing blow of her son’s diagnosis of autism and predictions that he would never walk or speak, Sonja Bennett refused to accept such limitations.

Kalin Bennett, a 19-year-old freshman basketball player at Kent State, didn’t sit up until he was 2, didn’t take his first steps until he was 4, didn’t talk until he was 7, when “Mama” finally escaped his lips. But Sonja still set ground rules for Kalin and wouldn’t allow him to say “can’t” around their Little Rock, Arkansas home.

Instead, she replaced it with the mantra: “I can. I will. I shall.”

“I was always hearing everything he wasn’t going to do and they’re telling me, ‘Come to grips with it, Mrs. Bennett.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m not going to. I’m going to work with him’ and that’s what I did,” Sonja said Wednesday after Kent State’s season-opening victory at the M.A.C. Center.

Sonja kept Kalin in communications classes, even after he stopped stuttering. He’s now enrolled in a drama course and chats with anyone, from children he’s inspired to reporters from CNN and ESPN. Sonja encouraged him to play four instruments — drums, base guitar, lead guitar and keyboard, with drums his favorite. She moved to Kent, finding a place five minutes away as he told her, “I can’t do this without you, mom,” and she said, “Don’t worry, I’m right there.” She plans to start a podcast for mothers of autistic children that Kalin named “Hoops and Hearts.”

Sonja Bennett said her determination is rooted in the fact that she lives with one lung. Her toughness was honed by her grandfather, gospel recording artist Horace Walters, who died three years ago at 102.

“I was trained not to give up, to always fight. So I had that fight in me, I just put it in him,” Sonja said of Kalin.

Bennett remembers some of those conversations with his mother when “I can’t” slipped out.

“It was terrible,” Kalin said. “Some way she would get me to do it and she would say, ’I thought you said you couldn’t do it.‴

But there are more goals on the list to check off. He wants to play in the NBA. He wants to inspire people around the world. He wants a yacht.

That means he must hone the talent that attracted Kent State coach Rob Senderoff and assistant Matt Sligh, who recruited Bennett out of Link Year Prep in Branson, Missouri, and become a productive college player. He must develop his 6-foot-11 body — supported by size 20 feet — that recently dipped below 300 pounds. He must bounce back from surgery on his left shoulder to repair an injury that dates back to his days at Little Rock Christian High School.

“We couldn’t just throw him to the wolves,” KSU basketball sports performance coach Brice Cox said. “His strength was behind his size. We have to work on his spatial awareness, his ability to control his own body. We had to teach him how to move. We call it basically like barbecue. We slow cook it. The longer it takes to cook, the better it’s going to taste.”

Gerald said when Kalin took up the sport, his circle of friends was small, but the game “opened him up personality-wise.”

“He looks at the other players, those are his brothers, this is his family, and he’s really serious about that,” Gerald said. “It’s not just on the court. He hangs out with these guys, he spends all his time with them, he sweats with them. He thrives off that.”

Bennett was headed to Arkansas-Little Rock before coach Wes Flanigan was hired as an Auburn assistant before the 2018-19 season, prompting Bennett’s commitment to Kent State.

Bennett was headed to Arkansas-Little Rock before coach Wes Flanigan was hired as an Auburn assistant before the 2018-19 season, prompting Bennett’s commitment to Kent State.

“This ain’t cocky, I’d say like 13. I was like 6-6, 6-7,” Bennett said Saturday when asked when he set his sights on college athletics. “I was like, ‘Why down here? All the way in Kent, Ohio?’

“First of all, I know I can inspire people. Second of all, I know the coaches have my best interest at heart. Third, I wanted to see more. I wanted a bigger atmosphere. It’s bigger than Arkansas to me. Being able to go to a Cavaliers game or a Browns game. I’ve never been to an NFL game before, so if I get a chance to go there, I can put that on my bucket list.”

Senderoff cautions that Bennett “has a long way to go as a basketball player,” noting that when he arrived he was measured at 25 percent body fat. Senderoff loves old-school big men, but knows they rarely play much as freshmen.

“All of you guys will go away and stop talking about him if he can’t play,” Senderoff said Saturday. “He needs to worry about developing as a player as opposed to the publicity that’s garnered for being the first autistic player on scholarship. That’s obviously an unbelievable accomplishment, but for him that’s supposed to be one chapter in his story. I don’t want it to be the only chapter.

“It is amazing what he and his mom have done, along with the coaches that have coached him, but it’s really him. But for the story to be even greater, you’d like to see him have success and be a guy who’s in the NCAA Tournament or playing to get to the NCAA Tournament, that he’s a contributor or a guy who gets a key rebound. Then the platform becomes bigger and the number of people that he gets to touch becomes even larger. To do that, he’s got to keep blinders on in terms of his focus in basketball.”

Gerald Bennett understands that, but sounds as undeterred as his son.

“He’s still raw and he’s still being molded. He understands the game, but he’s learning on a different level now,” Gerald said. “Kalin Bennett’s going to be fine. If Kalin Bennett says he’s going to play in the NBA, Kalin’s going to play in the NBA.”

Gina Campana, Kent State’s assistant director of diversity assessment and research, met with Bennett and his mother last year and explained the support services offered for students on the autism spectrum. Campana said when she started such initiatives in 2014, only Wright State and Marshall University provided anything similar and their programs were not free.

Campana said the time they spent together was so special that she called her mother afterward and said, ”‘I just had the best meeting of my life.’”

Campana has a son with Asperger’s syndrome who graduated from KSU in May. Because of their shared experiences, Campana said she and Sonja were finishing each other’s sentences.

Sonja said she allowed Kalin to make his college choice and he researched it thoroughly. Bennett said the meeting with Campana was a factor.

“That made it more clear to me knowing this was the place, knowing a support system outside basketball is there for me no matter what,” he said. “When we noticed she had the same experience with her son like my mom had with me, it was an eye-opener and just let me know if I come here, I know what I’ve got and I know what I can do here.”

Thus far, Bennett hasn’t had to rely much on those services. Sonja said the biggest challenge came on the day students returned to school.

“He was a little bit out of his element,” Sonja said. “The awesome thing that happened is the kids just got him and showed him where he needed to go so he didn’t feel alone, teammates and people in his class.

“The team, everybody is just one big family with him and that’s what he has to have, that family atmosphere. He’s loving it and I’m loving it.”

Bennett has become close with Cox, stopping by to see him almost daily before fall practice began and talking on the phone twice a day if he didn’t. Cox said he helps Bennett with “everything under the sun” as the freshman adjusts.

“Kalin helps me just as much as I help him. I’ve learned a lot from him. He can make any bad day good,” Cox said Wednesday. “He lights up the room. He definitely loves life. He loves basketball and being around people.

“He’s a natural giver. He truly wants to make sure everybody in the room is having the best day possible. Usually the first thing he says to me is ‘How are you doing today?’ It’s not like, ‘I have a problem, can you do this?’ He makes sure I’m OK first, then we dive into it.

Bennett was sitting in bed at prep school when he decided to announce via social media that he has autism.

“I’m like, ‘I’m going to go ahead and post this. Hopefully it helps somebody,’” he said. “I wake up the next morning and my phone is blowing off the table. Kids I played against on the AAU circuit told me, ‘I have autism.’ Kids that used to mess with me were saying, ‘I didn’t know you have autism. I’m sorry.’ I’m like, ‘You didn’t have to apologize because it’s cool now. We’ve grown past that.’

“It’s good to know that I can help other people and inspire other kids to follow their dreams no matter how far or how high on the spectrum you are.”

All who have met Bennett realize that basketball is just the vehicle for the higher calling inside him.

“Kalin loves helping people. Right now he’s showing other people, not just autism, he’s saying to anybody, ‘If you believe, you can do anything. You can’t let anyone else say what you will or won’t do,’” Gerald said. “I’ve always told him, ‘You can do anything you want to do.’ He’s built on that and he’s taken it even further. Not just, ‘I can do whatever I want to do, but I want to encourage everybody to try and live their dream.’ He’s living his dream.”

Senderoff said after Bennett signed, he received a phone call from an assistant at Syracuse and answered it thinking he was looking for a scouting report on a common opponent.

“His son has autism,” Senderoff said. “He was not the only person that has called me or emailed me that this was really emotional for them. I got emails from many different countries, from people who said it touched them and they shared it with their family or child. You don’t realize the impact he has had on people.”

Bennett said perhaps the biggest surprise since his story went public is the Instagram messages he receives from parents that say he’s giving them hope for their child.

“I didn’t think it was like that,” Bennett said. “Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I inspire myself. Every day I’d be like, ‘I can’t do this.’ Years down the road, I can say, ‘I did this, I accomplished this and I helped this person do this.’

“Hopefully I’ll be in a big ol’ yacht or something like that. But right now, it’s going to be good.”

Told of that goal, Cox said, “It’s going to have to be a big yacht.”

Kent State sophomore center Kalin Bennett, considered the first player diagnosed with autism to sign a Division I national letter of intent to play a team sport, announced via social media early Wednesday afternoon that he's entering his name in the transfer portal.

“I wanna thank Kent State University for all the time spent here from freshman year on to now,” Bennett said. “I want to thank all my friends, teammates and those I can call family for the rest of my life. With that being said I am putting my name in the transfer portal. Making this decision was nowhere near easy for me but … circumstances, COVID, and not being around my family has truly affected me"

“Kalin indicated to me (Tuesday) night that he wanted to get closer to his family down south,” said KSU head coach Rob Senderoff. “I feel like this pandemic and what we're all going through has been hard for everyone, and impacts everyone in a different way. I fully support his decision and wish him nothing but the best moving forward.”