By Ryan Ernst
Cincinnati Enquirer

Question: What do you get when you mix the movie Rudy with the movie Hoosiers? Answer: Joe Haarman.

After three weeks of tryouts and grueling workouts, the 6-foot-7 freshman from Indian Hill recently heard exactly what he wanted to hear from the Indiana basketball coaching staff.

"(Assistant coach John Treloar) sat me down and simply said they were giving me an invitation to walk on," Haarman said. "I was so stunned. I was just thinking in my head, 'Did he just say that?'"

The lanky redhead beat out 18 other hopefuls to become one of two non-scholarship players to join the Indiana University basketball team. The Indiana University basketball team - Basketball U.

And after the initial shock wore off and Haarman had run back to his dorm to call home, he was in for another surprise.

As if having his own Indiana jersey wasn't enough, guess which number they gave the kid? No.11.

As in IU alum Isiah Thomas. As in possibly the greatest player to ever don the candy-striped, red-and-white Indiana warm-up pants, which are Haarman's favorite perk.

"I remember telling my dad when I decided to walk on that I might get to wear the candy-striped pants," he said. "I just kept telling everyone how great that would be. For me, that's kind of the main image of Indiana basketball. I got to wear them for our first exhibition game and I just remember running out and thinking 'God, this is awesome.'"

Good thing Haarman gets a charge out of his warm-ups, because his chances of playing are minimal. He's a practice player, a role he accepts, even though he had offers from Division III schools.

"He just wasn't interested," his high school coach, Wally Vickers, said. "From the beginning, he wanted to walk on at a big school. He understood the process and that he wasn't going to get playing time. But he wanted to be part of a big-time program and play basketball every day."

So Haarman finished his senior year at Indian Hill, where he averaged 11 points and nine rebounds a game, then began looking for a school interested in walk-ons.

Vickers contacted Ohio, Charleston and South Carolina, but all had returning walk-on players. Indiana, however, coming off a Final Four appearance, did not.

"The coaches said they were willing to give me a chance to try out, that's it," Haarman said. "They were really upfront and honest."

And demanding.

"For the first time in my life, I thought I was going to throw up during a workout," Haarman said. "We'd be sprinting and cutting and rebounding and shooting all in one drill. And we'd get one drink of water in an hour workout."

Despite being outplayed and outsized at times, Haarman, a coach's son, wasn't out-hustled.

"They expect 100 percent, and that's the one thing I know I can give," he said. "That's what I kept thinking, and I always kind of envisioned being on the team."

So now Haarman is on the team. He wears the candy-striped pants. He does layup drills in front of 17,000-plus people at Assembly Hall. He sits on the bench of the No.21 team in the country. A lot.

And although Haarman didn't play in the Hoosiers' 87-56 exhibition win over Athletes in Action, this "practice player" says he'll be ready if coach Mike Davis looks to the very end of the bench.

"He's said before that effort is the most important thing to him," Haarman said. "So I'm expecting anything."

Others

Michael Zoller, a McNicholas grad, recently was named first-team All-Mid-Central-Conference in men's soccer at St. Francis (Ind.). Zoller was also the runner-up for the conference's Player of the Year award.

Sycamore alum Kirsi Hakkinen earned all-conference honors in tennis for Wellesley College. The sophomore had a 6-2 record in the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference.

Five members of the University of Cincinnati men's soccer team were honored by Conference USA. Tim Brown and Josh Gardner were second-team all-league selections, while teammates Wiremu Patrick and Brandon Dobbs made the third team. Jarrett Devereaux was named to the all-freshman team.

Covington Catholic alumnus Matt Wilson recently was named the Mid-Continent Conference athlete of the week. The Indiana University/Purdue University-Indianapolis freshman swimmer led his team to a 62-60 win over Xavier.

Ohio University sophomore midfielder Kendra Hornschemeier set the single-season assist record for the Bobcats with 11. The McNicholas grad ranks fifth on the school's all-time assists list.

The College of Mount St. Joseph volleyball team placed four players on the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference first team. They were Tammi Toney (Harrison), Ginny Thomas (Newport Central Catholic), Tiffany Norwell (Turpin) and Meghan Meador (Mount Notre Dame).

Senior hitter Bonita Wise of UC was last week's Conference USA volleyball co-player of the week. Wise averaged 5.14 kills a game as the Bearcats ran their winning streak to 12 straight.

E-mail rernst@enquirer.com