From the court to the track

With a basketball in hand and a bike helmet on his head, senior Nick Kappas stands north of campus. Just a little more than a week is left until the bicycle race that the entire IU campus waits for all spring.

Kappas already traded his sneakers for cleats, his basketball for a bike and a warm-up jersey with “Indiana” across the chest to a training jersey with “Achtung!” emblazoned on the front.

Kappas grew up dreaming of playing basketball at the collegiate and professional levels.

When Kappas set foot on campus in 2006, his dream was still alive.

Coming off a high school senior year when his team lost in the regional championship, Kappas was ready to set his sneakers to the hardwood of Assembly Hall.

He was not recruited by the Hoosiers, nor had he declined offers from any other Division I schools, but none of that mattered to Kappas. He just wanted to wear the seven letters of his school across his chest.

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Then-coach Kelvin Sampson told Kappas he would have to go through the walk-on process, but he had no problem with that. He just wanted to dribble in another game.

But that next game never came. In his first training session, Kappas ran down the court of the Student Recreational Sports Center, playing a pick-up game. During a jump shot, his entire life changed with one twist of his knee.

“My doctors thought it was my MCL and my LCL but it wasn’t at all ... but I was doing physical therapy as if those were loose to tighten them up,” he said.

The pressure on his knee caused it to crack three times before Kappas decided to seek another opinion at the bone and joint center.

“Within 30 seconds the guy was like ‘Yeah, you tore your ACL,’ so I had an MRI that day,” Kappas said. “It showed that I had completely torn the ACL in half.”

From there, he began a new round of physical therapy to actually treat his injury. Every day for six months, Kappas attended physical therapy where he sat on a bike for an hour in the morning, when most freshmen are getting ready for their first class.

His shoes firmly pressed against the pedals, Kappas pushed his legs down and around — the motion was supposed to heal his ACL and gain back his rotary strength. With every pump of his legs and turn of the wheel, Kappas moved closer to becoming the Little 500 rider he is today.

“It got to the point where pedaling was more fun than running or walking,” he said.
Playing for Sampson and the Hoosiers was still an option for Kappas, but when March rolled around, he said he declined a spot on the team, refusing to risk the ability to ever play another sport non-competitively.

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By this point in his freshman year, Kappas had pledged the fraternity Alpha Sigma Phi, and the rhythm of the bike gave Kappas the idea of one day competing in the Little 500.

With his basketball career done, he decided he would rather spend the rest of his time in college on two wheels.

In his sophomore year, Kappas joined two other brothers to put together the fraternity’s first team in five years, but they were unable to qualify.

Fellow Alpha Sig teammate Dane Rigney wanted to ride again the next year. But Kappas couldn’t find any interest among the rest of his brothers, leading him and Rigney to join Rigney’s older brother’s team, Achtung!.

“It’s called Achtung! because when it was started eleven years ago, it was when U2 came out with their “Achtung Baby” album, and every single guy on the team loved U2,” Kappas said. “In German, it means ‘Caution’ or ‘Look out’ ... so it’s kind of fitting.”

For Kappas, the thrill of Little 500 is enough to ease the pain of his freshman year.

“Little 5 has given me the opportunity to go down these hills anywhere from 40 to 50 miles per hour when I’m really pushing it,” Kappas said. “It just gives you a sense of freedom. You’re just rushing down this hill and the wind’s blowing through your face. You don’t hear anything but you breathing. You don’t see anything, just see trees flying by and the road in front of you.”

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Although Kappas was Achtung!’s fifth rider last year, Rigney said Kappas will be a contender on race day 2010.

“He’s worked way harder than he ever did before,” Rigney said. “He really wants to help our team do better than we did last year.”

Sitting in the crowd at last year’s race were Kappas’ mother and father, both IU alumni. Wendy Kappas said that although her heart hurt for her son after his basketball injury, she’s proud of where the wheels of his bicycle have taken him.

“I’m a firm believer of ‘what can’t kill you, makes you stronger,’” Wendy said. “Even though this happened, it made him sit back and reevaluate. It just shows that instead of dwelling on the past, he can recover and just move on, and that’s just the kind of kid he is.”
Before his injury, the only time Kappas had heard about the collegiate race that takes place at IU was in an article in a newspaper back home.

“I didn’t know the craziness of the greatest college weekend and the intensity that happens with it, but much like every other IU student, I quickly got wrapped up in it,” Kappas said. “This entire experience showed me that even though I can face a life-altering experience, I know that I have enough strength to get up, find something new that I love and keep going forward. Little 5 has really taught me that.”